Bill Neumire

It's not as if you haven't heard the news

There’s no safe
word, no failsafe, & across the way they’re burning
brush, boxes of Blue, last year’s paper
chain of days til Easter, drinking heavy for a Sunday

like they’re not sure Monday comes
this time,
but it’s not as if the friends didn’t come up
yesterday in the 92-degree afternoon
with Keystone & Hoffmans
& back tattoos of bonsai trees                        & didn’t we glisten
in chlorinated splash? Didn’t we guilt
out on the guilt-free menu?

Full, we pray the way orphans pray:
what is there?
so-so ambient radio? gravitational ritual
of wanting? some hugs? a History
Channel history?

In fact, a heart packed in ice can last
a few hours in the roseate dawn.
This is not a psa; it’s an elegy
for the mouse inside the shop vac tube
who dashed scared into the lawn’s cover
until you screamed & told me to stomp it out anyway.
Later, we found its pile of babies, one still
squeaking, in the folding chair.
Come on, it’s not as if everything
we love came free.

There are nights, more now,
when I think of the generator, ammo, medicine
expiration. Not zombies, but what survival will make
us. Like the widow neighbor who leaves her light on
all night, taking her glasses off, putting them on.

We’re a franchise
of 30-second thoughts, but tell me again
about your specialness. Tell me again how you taste
while the ice cream truck’s sun-drunk tune
slowly scans the streets
like a SWAT van looking for traitors
as solar lights dimly redeliver
the eternal day.

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Bill Neumire's first poetry collection, Estrus, was a semi-finalist for the 42 Miles Press Award, and his second ms, #TheNewCrusades, was a finalist for the Barrow Street Prize before being accepted for publication in 2022 by Unsolicited Press. Poems from this collection have appeared in Harvard Review Online, Beloit Poetry Journal and West Branch. In addition to writing, he also serves as an assistant editor for the literary magazine Verdad and as a reviewer for Vallum.