What's Left? Poem by Cheryl Lynn Moyer Peele

Immunity from feeling came from mentally

engaging in murders, every eight minutes,

on a high definition Panasonic television with a

wrap-around sound system. Each morning’s local

Advertiser obituaries describe the demise of vague

acquaintances and old school chums, as well as

the explicit details of crimes which occur within

a ten block radius. Reinforced by the by daily statistics

of civilian casualties from Israeli bombings, Iraq villages,

from flooding rivers or poisonous imported tomatoes.

Overloaded, my short term memory switches off,

making me unconcerned about the man ran over,

left to die on a street in Hartford, Connecticut. At night,

I climb on the cross-town bus with meaningless strangers,

I secretly imagine their lovers somewhere, somewhere else,

still entwined in passion and tangled hair. A little shiver,

but then a critical mind-saving gasp of air releases me

from survival instincts, then I can see their faces

begin to refocus again, in the clear pools of our eyes.