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STATE OF THE UNION
by Michael Meyerhofer

January 18, 2021 Contributed By: Michael Meyerhofer

The Market
Image by Photo Mix from Pixabay

All the news is talking

about the lack of surgical masks

and ice cream trucks for the dead,

how many grandfathers 

need help to breathe,

but today, I can’t seem to stop

wondering how oranges smell

when they’re burning. 

For that, too, is something

I’ve never known, having missed

my one chance to walk

a few blocks to a supermarket

that caught fire years ago,

the hoses too late, asparagus

like kindling, cans of pasta sauce

popping like firecrackers

they say, though men will say

anything to make up

for what they can’t buy or steal:

wine bottles boiled dry,

rotisserie chickens charred

down to the size of a child’s fist,

a forest of Bible-ply burnt

before it can even assist

those places we keep hidden,

and everywhere, puddles

of plastic flowing mercurially

between shelves that topple

whether you’re looking or not.

But had I risen at the first sound,

the first engine’s wail

lancing through my hangover,

I, too, might have stood so close

that every apolitical shift 

in the night breeze taught me 

something new about dairy aisles,

snap peas heat-forged

into arrowheads, and oranges:

what sweet mist they offer,

wept from the inside out.


MICHAEL MEYERHOFER‘s fifth poetry book, Ragged Eden, was published by Glass Lyre Press. He has been the recipient of the James Wright Poetry Award, the Liam Rector First Book Award, the Brick Road Poetry Book Prize, and other honors. His work has appeared in many journals including Hayden’s Ferry, Rattle, Brevity, Tupelo Quarterly, and Ploughshares. He is also the author of a fantasy series and the Poetry Editor of Atticus Review. For more information and an embarrassing childhood photo, visit www.troublewithhammers.com.

Filed Under: Poetry Posted On: January 18, 2021

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