Snippets


News like this is always a 10 on the Richter scale. From epicenter to aftershock,
everything I owned fell off the shelves, funny how my walls did not come
tumbling down too.
When you're nervous and small, everyone wants to shield you, but this one shook
my bowels in three-quarters time. I had to banish all the "C" words from my
thesaurus—no more Coughing, Catastrophes or Coffins—here, take my C-name.
From Magna Cum Laude to San Marco to Chemo, this sure has been an oblong year,
or maybe we should just call it a slightly pregnant pause. And, suddenly, all the vials
of my youth have come home to roost in mega-doses. Life is obviously not a
bowl of Viagra, and we don't accept simultaneous emissions.
Can you handle a hornet's nest? When people speak of this as a battle, I picture
myself in the ring of the Coliseum with a wild boar and a fine Greek chorus.
Somebody's going to be gored . . . or cured.
I can see my corrugated tongue has left everybody squirming. Good, that is
what the poems are here for, but what can you say when there's no more
mercury left in your mouth? I always manage to rub saline into everything,
but even saltwater is not a reasonable facsimile for sperm to fill these
fluid-less sacs. Everybody needs a wet connection.
This is about what happened to my body. Sometimes the soil stagnates
and sometimes things grow where they ought not grow. So why be
euphemistic? I refuse to hide under my hat and pallor. Let's fill this poem
with rakes, hoes, and plenty of spades. Ad nauseam. And, speaking of which,
I'm stone-cold nauseous, but these days there's not much to vomit over.
Now is the time for books, sabbaticals, and hibernation. The Pope is dead,
but no one told me to put my papers in order. This is a no-panic zone.
If you park it here, your anxiety will be towed away.


� Cindy Hochman