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The Wreck
after Eleanor Wilner
On the Doomsday clock, five minutes left to go - -
caffeine rush, traffic jam, road rage, scandal, scams - -
if you want to get to heaven better take it slow.
The pedal’s to the metal though no one knows
just where we’re headed. Today Iraq, tomorrow Iran...
On the Doomsday clock, five minutes to go.
North Korea, India, Pakistan, holy Jerusalem all ready to blow,.
You’d think we’d learn: two World Wars, Hiroshima, Vietnam.
If you want to get to heaven better take it slow.
But the genie won’t go back into the bottle, or so
they say, and so we keep on running toward an-
nihilation. Five minutes left to go.
Remember 1989, how,
Cold War over and the Wall tumbled down,
it seemed like heaven, the world made new. For a second, time slowed.
But we’re living in fast fast forward now
since the Towers fell and fear empowered a little man
to lead us to our Doom. Five minutes left to go.
Children playing up ahead. Pray to Heaven. Slow, slow.
Civil Disobedience
The first time I got arrested
I felt free and powerful
like one bad-azzed
traffic officer disobeyer
especially as I stood there
hands cuffed behind my back
trying to chat up the young black cop
who couldn’t risk telling me his name
though I was friendly and asked 3 times
and wouldn’t let go of my arm
as if he thought I had some place to go,
as if I hadn’t set the scene in motion,
hadn’t left him no choice,
forced him to arrest me.
And they could take away
my belt, my shoelaces,
my diamond earring,
and keep me bound
one wrist to the wall
cold and by myself for hours
but what has any of that
to do with freedom?
Jokers Wild and One-Eyed Jacks
each of us, islands - -
why else red dye's daily run
scarcely touches us.
plates heave, volcanoes
blow - - we are not moved.
what, heart, would you ask - -
that we bleed with the bleeding,
die with the dying?
someone must survive,
praise instead of mourn.
heart, what would you ask?
some mad, impossible task - -
reconfiguring
bit by broken bit
first world, cosmic egg?
yoked to so many
how'd we ever move or breathe?
interdependence - -
what precarious
balance that implies,
such a fragile thread,
the cobweb casually swept
from the far corner...
but our lives make sense,
a just God loves us.
some reap the whirlwind;
others draw untroubled lives,
choices what to buy.
who said life was fair?
play the hand you're dealt.
heart, please, lift your eyes.
Don’t forsake the human face,
though you die of shame.
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Constance Merritt's Blessings and Inclemencies, her second poetry collection, was published in the fall by LSU Press. Individual poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Poetry, Prairie Schooner, and The New Yorker, among others.
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