January 2024
FirstLast
medarnell65@gmail.com
Bio Note: I am an online tutor and lead custodian in Papillion, Nebraska, and have published poems for over 40 years, receiving my MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. My latest book is The Sower from Cyberwit Press. I have 3 more books coming out in the next year from White Violet Press, Impspired Books, and Cyberwit Press.

Obsessive-Covidian
Wash your hands again—covid might survive these seven times you’ve scrubbed your nails in fifteen minutes. You haven’t done it right, so wait till night, see how your body feels— if you show fever, take your temp five times, no—six, perhaps thermometers are wrong. Scour the sink for smart, demonic germs that want to crawl into your bed and sting you till you’ve chilled but all the sheets are wet, and god, you have to call in sick to work— you had such good attendance, now you’ll sit at home two weeks, your memory will blur of what you haven’t cleaned, you crave to kill that thing that slipped into your veins and rills.

Love Underground
It is a hard word for you. You don't know when to say it, and fear what comes after it's said. It's easy to say to the dead, and especially so to children-- they always love you back in that you're part of my world way, not the I'll die without you way. They always say it without a motive, or putting on a display, and it always means more because they never shut the door. All these years in your fugue state, never knowing who you were, and letting no one near, love has been your secret sleep, kept slightly alive for a mate who’d laugh and make you laugh, whom it might take forever to meet, and if you did: a quiet pause would no longer take you deep to where your aching epitaph could have remained love never was.
©2024 FirstLast
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