Not Far From Greenwich

                        “There is no there there”—Gertrude Stein

Amy Lerman

I’m pretty sure the sky fell
into the Thames this morning,
a giant swatch, all gray, no
horizon, even the boating vessels
blend, blur the hours, until tea
time, though I don’t mind
how my scarf warms up
to my chin like a kettle cozy,
and besides,
later will be color, claret red
accents–unexpected
like the girl’s red coat
in Schindler’s List–dripping
down the soldier’s slashed neck
into puddles at his feet. Why
the attacker chose a meat cleaver,
requested to be filmed for tv, then
dragged the dead man’s body
along the road I won’t know;
I will just see the newspaper photos,
a sheeted mound ahead of crime
tape and blood-streaked asphalt
that just this morning matched
the world,
its quiet.

Amy Lerman, by way of Florida, Illinois, England, and Kansas, lives with her husband and very spoiled cats in the Arizona desert where she is residential English Faculty at Mesa Community College. Her chapbook, Orbital Debris (Choeofpleirn Press) won the 2022 Jonathan Holden Poetry Chapbook Contest, she has been a Pushcart nominee, and her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Passengers, Atticus Review, Muleskinner, Radar Poetry, Slippery Elm, Rattle, Smartish Pace, and other publications.