Plastics are on my mind, floods. Any pause

in the conversation, I come up with some

Sorry Business, Aboriginal term for mourning.

Doleful, that’s me, no small talk, not unpleasant,

but my idea of intimate is apt to be some

terrible statistic. I can’t say Susan

is feeling better or Eileen’s arm is mending

without adding but she has a preexisting condition

or but she’s got no insurance (as if getting the facts

straight makes it all right). I’ve got no banter,

I’m all judgement and edges, an edgy white lady

wondering what to do, what to do next

as in Jesus is coming, look busy.

Elizabeth Poreba is a retired New York City high-school English teacher. She has published two collections of poems, Vexed and Self Help: A Guide for the Retiring, and two chapbooks, The Family Profile and New Lebanon. The eighth line of this poem is from Elizabeth Willis’s poem, “And What My Species Did.” “Ruin from the air” is a reference to the book by the same name, written by Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan Witts.

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Published in the May 2023 issue: View Contents
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