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Meditations in an Emergency

Screams break my heart. The tree-topper angel lost
& the new glittery star projects heaven as a hologram
on the cracked ceiling, which breaks my heart.

I find a wasp in the bathtub. I see a reel of a python wrapped
around a deer & broken lightbulbs strung in the tree. Pinhole
leaks in hot, old-galvanized—the worst actors in the attic.

Saying goodbye & the unsaid never again. The cupped
hand over a forehead, the boy selling Chiclets,
the woman squatting on the sidewalk with a broken

luggage wheel & it all breaks my heart.

In a dream, I wear the wrong gloves
found hanging off a wire. Gloves for my heart.
Gloves to pry open my rusty heart.

It is easy to look away; it is difficult to listen.

I have to stop wearing my dead friend’s scarf.

—
John Milkereit lives in Houston, Texas, working as a mechanical engineer. He has completed a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at the Rainier Writing Workshop. In December 2023, Kelsay Books published his most recent collection of poems, Lost Sonnets for My Unvaccinated Lover.

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