POEM

td>

News

by Richard Solly

Posted September 17, 1999 · Issue 62

There was a time narrated by blood and doctors
when the newspaper trundled down the hall.
I'd lie in bed interpreting the cart's pleas and squeals:

a fire in Cleveland or an end to the Rwanda war,
but never a treaty between my red and white blood cells.
When Roger swung my door open, wheeled the cart inside,

I knew he brought blizzards, famine, genocide.
I thought the misery and ache of news should crush his cart,
make the wheels grind no farther than breakfast.

None of us ready ever again to lift the paper to our faces
and find dead students on the same page with furniture ads.
Or flames curling the edges; the stink of flood water

treaking the long dark columns. Once, when the universe
gave birth to my daughter, the ink ran crisp and light,
each page a wing fluttering in my hands,

o sooner captured than released. Now Roger lugged the paper
to my bedside, and without taking off his shoes sat up in bed
with me. He had highlighted victim stories in red; natural disasters

in yellow, but insisted on reading the comics first
then articles on St. Francis, Pascal, and the Marx Brothers
he wrote himself, pasted on the murderous Metro section.

The nurse always prepared a tray for Roger, too.
He'd pour coffee, swirl the cream with his finger. Then lie back,
and while he encouraged me to eat heartily unfolded the world,

its joy and sorrow spread across our laps.

Richard Solly, a professional writer and teacher, lives in St. Paul, Minnesota. He has received numerous grants and awards, including the Bush Artist Fellowship and several Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowships. His most recent book (with Yvonne Pearson) is The Way Home: A Collective Memoir of the Hazelden Experience, (Hazelden, 1997). His essay "The World Inside" recently appeared in the anthology The Healing Circle: Authors Writing of Recovery (Penguin, New York, 1998).

Caleb Brown is an illustrator and biologist living in Montana. By day he drives a delivery van, and by night he draws pictures with his computer.

Previous Featured Poems

The Goodnight Kiss

by Richard Solly (Posted September 3, 1999 · Issue 61)

Dog Science

by Jennifer Nerissa Davis (Posted August 6, 1999 · Issue 60)

The Skylark

by John Clare (Posted July 23, 1999 · Issue 59)

To a Mouse

by Robert Burns (Posted July 9, 1999 · Issue 58)

The Science of Longevity

by Jemshed Khan (Posted June 25, 1999 · Issue 57)

Sonnet - to Science

by Edgar Allen Poe (Posted June 11, 1999 · Issue 56)