The Great American Eclipse
She Felt a "Crawling" Sensation. Doctors Found a Live Cockroach in Her Skull
"They Will Be Met with Fire and Fury Like the World Has Never Seen"
Automated Book-Culling Software Drives Librarians to Create Fake Patrons to "Check Out" Endangered Titles
How Deep Can You Dig a Hole?
Ringling Bros Circus Closure Signals the End to "The Saddest Show on Earth"
Was the day I learned one of my best friends
killed himself. We’d swapped comics, curses,
and records, nerds of cosmic proportions.
The mystery of my own son, soon thirteen,
is enveloping an open book with a cover
that will shift, first soft cover, then hardback,
the armor of manhood. I bring eclipse glasses
to work and we sneak outside to watch the sky
wink at us like a drunk, shadow puppets in the alley.
My son eclipses me on the basketball court,
my legs unable to keep pace with moon bounce
grace. The office is a planet I once thought orbited
me, but I have been pulled into dark matter and need.
Light failed. My friend could not open his eyes.
I fear my son will succumb to the pull of sadness.
My universe is a desk and I try to see it through.
She Felt a "Crawling" Sensation. Doctors Found a Live Cockroach in Her Skull
This metamorphosis is one of death,
either to visitor or host. This hunger
does not place any above reproach.
This journey clacks with determination
or despair. This sickness is not easily
diagnosed, swells in dreams and ride
shares. This truth is bait and to look
is to become and to become is choice.
This fear of invasion searches to nest,
whether wrapped in newsprint or skin.
This stethoscope swings and the drill
pushes through the bone and moist
passages, a birth of sorts, collective
dread about the terrorist in our heads.
They Will Be Met with Fire and Fury Like the World Has Never Seen
This is a love poem to the apocalypse.
I’ve flirted with you in so many ways,
for so many blinks of a radioactive clock
which I mistook for winks or nervousness.
Only one of us needs to an incandescent
angel scorching the sky while I hold out
my arms, hold out hope, hold my bowels.
This kind of infatuation is deadly, tomes
and verse, created and consumed. Poised
for when worn boots tap dance on ash.
The nightlight is an ember perhaps left
to the imagination of a child, the spark.
Pages were flipped to this poor flicker,
my heart clacking like a bicycle in traffic,
the countless disasters I practiced
on my way to an ending I will
not consummate for fear of success.
A pen poises over the page, ink drains.
Words enough cannot keep fire at bay.
Automated Book-Culling Software Drives Librarians to Create Fake Patrons to "Check Out" Endangered Titles
The ghost in the machine had become the machine.
Fahrenheit 451 was in danger because the AI
believed in the metric system, while no patron
could spell it. All’s Quiet on the Western Front
would have been replaced with a book on tape
of a tell-all from a YouTube star turned politician.
Some believe the librarians placed their fingers
on the scales, the equivalent of dishing vegetables
to lions or children, and readers needed a helping
hand. Choices would need to be made between
The Poisonwood Bible and the King James Bible.
There was always that novel that saved someone
from the wrong decision, the wrong mate, the wrong
career, but the disappearing book was the mystery
of librarians reaching deep to stave off extinction.
Robots would program books and imaginations.
Wasn’t this just the tired algorithm of popularity
that had haunted them all from schoolyard days
when they clutched their books close and carried them
to bed, each new tome a lover, teacher, and friend?
As the gopher that caused you to sprain
your ankle in the wind-whipped fields
of your childhood, wild grass and weeds
draped over drops more dangerous
in memory, as the survivalist who hooks
up with the fortune hunter in a cavern
closed to the public because of cracks
in the causeway and hopes of riches
squirreled away, as the liar reveals
a slick well of subterfuge and news
of a boy saved by unselfish heroism,
as the depth of the devil’s lair
and endless despair is in the details,
as the inferno of greed melts below
where earth churns into a fire sea,
as the mother who warned you
the grave you shoveled for the family
pet could lead to China, as you plunge
into adulthood in a bunker that may
never be reached by drill sergeants
or drill bits, you will be always be
tested for the depths of your beliefs.
Ringling Bros Circus Closure Signals the End to "The Saddest Show on Earth"
We know why the clowns were frowning,
bloody smiles downturned for a cavalcade
of towns, the howls of elephants and lions
trumpeting the end of audience thunder.
I took my son Leo to the circus just after
the divorce, the subconscious urge to be
the popular parent a spectacle in itself.
Mornings came and went without a laugh.
We both agreed the daredevil clown spinning
a motorcycle on a rickety track in the rafters
was our favorite, even though we both hated
heights and falling into a bottomless shadow.
There were nights when we no longer spoke
and a crowd of many became a father of none.
Our demons come in many shape and sizes,
out of canons and lions’ mouths, nightmares
for which we aren’t equipped, inconsolable
jesters slipping away, welts that won’t heal.
A former contributor to UCity Review, Martin Ott has published eight books of poetry and fiction, most recently LESSONS IN CAMOUFLAGE, C&R Press, 2018. His first two poetry collections won the De Novo and Sandeen Prizes. His work has appeared in more than two hundred magazines and fifteen anthologies.
