Two poems

Photo by Lillian Fisher on Unsplash

By Julie Steiner

Big Hit

(The Band Perry, 2010)

“If I die young,” the country smash begins,

oblivious to the fact it’s being played

within a children’s hospital. Dismayed

adults start loudly praising pretty fins

in waiting-room aquariums. The bins

of grimy toys, the curly-edged cascade

of magazines—once shunned for germs—now aid

diversion ploys. The catchy tune still wins.

“If I die young,” a skunk-haired desk clerk sings,

then snorts, “A little late for that, I guess!”

Her colleague laughs. That line about the mom

who’s burying her baby only stings

if that’s a possibility. Unless

your world could end, that drum-tick’s not a bomb.

Now Showing

for QRL of Norman, Oklahoma

Vasquez Rocks — my stomping grounds, third grade

until I left for college — got destroyed

as Star Trek’s Planet Vulcan, years ago.

Just Hollywood illusion. Even so,

it hollowed me. I chuckled, to avoid

choking up, to see the place unmade.

Fake, I scoffed. Of course it wasn’t real.

Ridiculous. The school that I’d attended

was not beneath a weapon that descended

from hostile skies. Faux mayhem, to appeal

to fanboys. I expanded on that spiel —

not sold yet — as, onscreen, my homeworld ended.

Oh, Quincy. Moore. I hope you’re not offended,

but Fuck. I can’t imagine how you feel.

Written while watching news coverage on May 21, 2013, the day after a mile-wide tornado destroyed 1,150 houses and two elementary schools in Moore, Oklahoma.

Julie Steiner is the pseudonym of a recovering classicist in San Diego, California. Her original poetry and verse translations from Italian, Spanish, French, Latin, and Greek have appeared in many venues — most recently, in Light, Lighten Up Online, Literary Matters, The New Verse News, and The Ekphrastic Review. For more, see Off-Piste on Mount Parnassus (offpisteonmountp.substack.com).