DRILL

by Jane Edna Mohler   

  

In the confident glow
of an iPhone, we pass
a silent hour in the school’s
utility room with dead
beetles, frantic
spiders, and the librarian
browsing Pinterest.
 
My back against
a door that won’t lock,
foot braced on the railing
of stairs leading to oblivious 
motors and sweating pipes 
accustomed to the peace 
of working alone.
 
The librarian scrolls fervently. 
Which chicken recipe 
will she choose? Maybe 
Easter themed cupcakes
or a floral wreath crafted
for the family gathering 
if those gunshots we hear are real. 

From National Association of School Psychologists: “After an armed assailant drill: Emotional or physical reactions can be delayed following a highly intense simulation drill.”

Jane Edna Mohler is Bucks County Poet Laureate Emeritus (Pennsylvania). Recent publications include Gargoyle, River Heron Review, and One Art. Her collection Broken Umbrellas was published by Kelsay Books. She is the Poetry Editor of the Schuylkill Valley Journal in Philadelphia.

A SCRAP OF FOUND PARCHMENT (TO AN ATHENIAN SWIMMER)

by Jenna Le

Ryan Lochte explains how a Trojan wall ran into his chariot.

Do you believe you deserve your leisure, drunk spraddle-legged
boy? Did you earn it under the walls of Troy?

You boast that laurel wreathes your brow, but neglect to mention
windblown leaves are piled high
on the juncture of your thighs. Well, if one spends enough time outdoors,
plant life isn’t hard to come by.


Jenna Le is the author of Six Rivers (NYQ Books, 2011) and A History of the Cetacean American Diaspora (Anchor & Plume Press, 2016). Her poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and translations appear or are forthcoming in AGNI Online, Bellevue Literary Review, The Best of the Raintown Review, Denver Quarterly, The Los Angeles Review, Massachusetts Review, The Village Voice, and elsewhere.

ROADSIDE SHRINES

by Carol Sanford

Highway shrine built in 2002 for DWI victim, Danielle Romero

You find them along expressways,
on the curves of country roads,
at city intersections harboring a patch of grass,
anywhere forty thousand of us die each year:
rough wooden crosses, wreaths
bright bows, plastic flowers
children's toys, photos.

Some tended regularly
some shrouded by weeds,
they promise, "You'll be in our thoughts"
"Love you forever," "We'll meet again."

Christina Johnson, an only child
died ten years ago--three months
short of high school graduation,
her shrine a four-foot cross
trimmed often in artificial flowers.

Driving past that spot
notorious for black ice, I imagine
her parents' lives and want comfort for them
and some lesson for us
in keeping the grief of highways
palpable and public.

 
Carol Sanford, a former teacher, lives in Michigan and writes poems and fiction in the loft of a cabin she and her husband built in the woods.