Patricia Murphy

What's Next?

In this time of unrest, what's next?   

Who will be our President on January 20, 2021?  

What will become of the United States?  

Do I even want to live here anymore?  

My beloved United States of America.  

I wonder as I wander.  

In this era, will normalcy return?  

Or will we just go downhill from here?  

As time passes by, who do I rely on?  

Myself and my own inner voice.  

I must do what's right for me.  

I must sing my own song.  

Write my own tune. 

Perform as an actress in my own way.  

Direct as I see fit.  

Talk from my own strength.  

Dance from my own choreography.  

Walk my own walk.  

I will rely on God as my higher power.  

For there is no tower better.  

I write to the letter. 

All for the greater good of humanity. 

Mom 

I wonder what's next for Mom. 

Yesterday, it was fifty-three years 

since she passed away.  

I remember the phone call I received 

from my Dad like it was today.  

He was calling me from Mom's 

hospital bed.  

It was an early morning call 

around 8 or 9 am.  

Dad told me Mommy had gone 

to heaven.  

She was young.  

Her illness finally consumed her 

after five years of battling it.  

As a devout Catholic I know 

she went to heaven.  

For years to come she remained 

with me.  

Her voice was always in my ears.  

I believe she is my Guardian Angel.  

She couldn't be with me physically 

any longer, but remained with me 

spiritually.  

As I tried to protect my younger 

sister and I from disaster.  

We remained strong through it all.  

It's made me who I am today.  

Rick Leddy

Just (An Electoral Celebration)

Give me this moment

This one shining moment

This glorious sunrise

This howl to the moon

Give me this deep inhalation

This roaring exhalation

This brief breeze brushing 

Kissing the new morning light

Give me this dance

This solid stamping of joyous feet

Leaving indentations in drifting sand

Give me this open hymnal

This song raising the roof

The lyrics resonating possibility

And hope in the future

Give me this prayerful meditation

This vibrating celebration

This spontaneous combustion

Burning bright blinding joy

Give me this moment

This ethereal blink 

This solid apparition 

Screaming yes into the teeming crowd

Just give me this 

Despite whatever comes next

Just give me 

This

Covid Lessons

I didn’t die

So that’s good

But I don’t know if it still might kill me

So

Bad

The three-month disruption

The utter not knowing

My family trapped in an apocalyptic amusement park

Riding an up and down, twisting turning, rickety,
jumping off the rails Covid roller coaster

Careening into dusk isolation

Will it come back,

a few months down the line

to finish the job?

There is so much not knowing

So much fill in the blank supposing

As I get ready to face the music

Go back to work

Watch the slow controlled recoil of others

The immediate and nervous sanitizing of hands

As I tell them that I had it

I’ll give them my candid Amazon rating

“I would give this zero stars if I could”

My one star on Yelp

Then watch the furtive glances

The flitting, silent lowered eyes acknowledgment 

That I am one of the THEM now

I wonder if Jesus healed lepers

Ever got hugged again completely

Or if there was always a tick, a forever-after pause, 

a lizard-brain fear of embracing death 

What if this is shrapnel that can’t be removed

Inching toward my heart

Waiting, burrowing 

A patient, silent assassin 

But I will smile 

Beneath the mask

Beneath the scream

Beneath the pitch-black doubt

Of what the future holds

Whether it will disappear

Or whether I will always cohabitate 

With a squalid shadow squatter

I am still alive

And that is good

Better than the over two Rose Bowls filled

fate of others

I repeat that graveyard whistle mantra

Knowing that the world will still turn

With or without me

All Our Tomorrows

It’s not the knowing

It’s the not knowing

It’s not the doing

But the undone

It’s not the seen

But the unseen

That haunts us

Casting incomplete shadows

beneath our full moon aspirations

We are greedy for time, more time

But we can’t hoard the wind,

nor grasp what is only borrowed

We cannot gather

all the precious moments

that slipped through our fingers

as we slept with open eyes

And now it has come to this

A coin flip

A bullet finding a brain

All the hours we could have lived

whispering dust and regret

We vow it will change

That it will all be different

Tomorrow

But lies become lullabies

Whispering lulling lyrics of more than we are

And in the end 

there can only be hope

Because there is nothing more than that

No matter how tattered and bare

Mark Fisher

The American Kaiju

beneath uneasy slumber
dreams an ugly dream
that spins like satellites
through that streaky bacon sky
and spreads out good news
like a virus
of self-fulfilling misery
exhaling heartbreak
and breathing in gloom
with the hypocritical fog
that sweeps away gods
and loosens the wingnuts
holding down the madness
resting on the elderly greatness
and distant memories of happiness
drowning out the mournful cries
of children
still you’re incapable
of being the hero
dropping atom bombs
in the true miracle
of evolution
as next we shrink down
into the quantum realm
to tussle with Schrodinger
about what we really are