When the sunlight becomes my alarm clock, which I have not used for years after it replaced our dead dog and cat who had turned me into the punctual person I am seen to be, after a very short while I forget our town has transcended Shirley Jackson’s village, become the world-wide lottery it is now, I wake up. When my daughter and her boyfriend are stuck in Los Angeles, my middle son barely escaped from Mexico to Illinois, my oldest son’s specialty—on line education— becomes the only thing between family isolation and solitary confinement, I wake up. Spring was supposed to spring yesterday, but Winter refused to leave and the Cubs were to open the season next Saturday but might not ever play this year since my Dad threw me a baseball at three and took me to Wrigley as if it were Mecca till lung cancer… Last week was the birthday of the ex-girlfriend I was to marry until, waiting tables in college, I accidentally dumped lemonade on my future wife until breast cancer,,, Caught between a dreamless night and the creak of my bones as I dress, after a short while, a very short while, I wake up. Copyright 2020 Vern Fein
Bio:
A retired special education teacher, living in Illinois, Vern Fein has published over one hundred poems on over fifty sites, a few being: *82 Review, The Literary Nest, Gyroscope Review, The Vehicle, Courtship of Winds, 500 Miles, The Write Launch, Broadkill Review, Soft Cartel, and River and South.
Donation Appeal:
Throughout June and July, we will be presenting on this web site work by poets and artists responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. We hope you will find these works relevant, comforting and inspiring as we all cope with the economic and health-related fallout.
As you view the work on this site each day, we would like to encourage you to donate to the Arlington Food Assistance Center (AFAC). Their mission “ is to feed our neighbors in need by providing dignified access to supplemental groceries. AFAC is seeing a record number of families due to the COVID-19 pandemic as families who never thought they would ever be in need are now showing up at our doors for much needed food.” And, in keeping with our hunger-focused efforts, you may also want to visit the Poetry X Hunger website where poems by many poets are posted and are being used by anti-hunger organizations.”
Please consider donating to AFAC. If you do, let us know which poet or artist inspired you so we can send you a personal thank you.
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