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One Day
Melanie Perish

Suppose you’re walking down Island Avenue
in Reno, Nevada and suddenly
a drone swarm comes flying toward you
over the BELIEVE sign on the city plaza
over the Virginia Street Bridge and the earth
erupts in dust and craters on the pavement
cleaves the sidewalk in front of Trinity Episcopal
and splinters chairs at an outdoor café
and you stop and stare, but can’t understand
what this earsplitting buzz and blow is doing
in your usually quiet city instead of the West Bank
or Kyiv on CNBC or YouTube TV and you think
this isn’t real and you keep walking
toward Virginia Street where you want to turn right
toward the Nevada Museum of Art
or the Cheese Board winesellar where you’ll
see what salads they have for lunch
but this is very real and one of the IEDs hits you
nails you, shatters your leg, shrapnel
in your face and belly and continues toward
Wingfield Park blind to your screams
and not caring at all, not at all.

—
Melanie Perish’s poems have appeared in Sequestrum, Third Street Review, Calyx, Sinister Wisdom, The Meadow, Persimmon Tree, and other publications. Nevada Humanities has featured her work in two websites: Nevadan to Nevadan (2022) and Double Down Blog (2024). Passions & Gratitudes (Black Rock Press, 2011) and The Fishing Poems (Meridian Press, 2016) are recent. Foreign Voices, Native Tongues (Blurb/Single Wing Press) was released January 2021. She is grateful for the generosity of other poets.

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Have you read these poems:
The Heart Is by Michael Carman
Leftover Straw from the Circus by Richard Eric Johnson

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