Volume 22, Number 12—December 2016
Another Dimension
Flu Days
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Shivering, you drag yourself,
as if gun-shot, to the living room,
to the old movie channel,
to a Bogart festival,
your mind fogged over
(like the street on the screen)
edging toward feverish sleep
when Bogey snarls
at Ida Lupino:
“Of all the 14-carat saps…”
Hours later when you wake,
he’s smacking Peter Lorre:
“When you’re slapped,
you’ll take it and like it!”
And as if cuffed, you black out,
head pounding, and come to
upon Ingrid Bergman
and “You must remember this,”
before fading again, then back
to Bogey hacked to death
by Bedoya’s machete,
all that gold dust blown away
with the whole bloody day,
everything gone—gone black
as your living room windows—
those previews of The Big Sleep.
Peter Makuck is a writer, essayist, and poet and Distinguished Professor Emeritus at East Carolina University, Greenville, North Carolina; email: peter@makuck.com
Acknowledgment
Poem reprinted from Mandatory Evacuation, ©2016, by Peter Makuck, by courtesy of BOA Editions, Ltd., Rochester, NY, USA; http://www.boaeditions.org.
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Table of Contents – Volume 22, Number 12—December 2016
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Page created: October 13, 2016
Page updated: October 13, 2016
Page reviewed: October 13, 2016
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