Stressed by maybe COVID baited breath,
Jersey hospital perimeter barb-wired,
guy who seems can’t take no hint,
so duh dah dah da bing
I parachute onto graveled roof’s bulls-eye
where arriving blue-white helicopters
aim to drop off fresh pinkish hearts
for desperate transplant patients
make way down the crowded elevator,
exit through candy-striper gift shop
into even more than usual bedlam
of tumultuous emergency room
where one of my life-long dearest friends
plus now ungowned medical colleague
asks me from underneath worn flimsy
possibly torn dirty surgical mask
if mine wanted to join their home-sequestered
mixed observant-atheist family tele-videoing
to light candles, drink grape juice/wine
then break bread together in Hoboken
as they Zoom into Shabbat – clever phrase
in past mighta gone viral (but unkosher
to say anymore?) –– unless COVID’s
dancing devil’d found his shadow 1st.
Gerard Sarnat won San Francisco Poetry’s 2020 Contest, the Poetry in the Arts First Place Award plus the Dorfman Prize, and has been nominated for handfuls of 2021 and previous Pushcarts plus Best of the Net Awards. Gerry is widely published including in The North Meridian Review, Buddhist Poetry Review, Gargoyle, Blue Minaret, Main Street Rag, New Delta Review, Northampton Review, New Haven Poetry Institute, Newark Public Library, Texas Review, Vonnegut Journal, Brooklyn Review, San Francisco Magazine, Monterey Poetry Review, The Los Angeles Review, New York Times, London Reader and Review Berlin as well as by Harvard, Stanford, Dartmouth, Penn, Chicago and Columbia presses. He’s authored the collections Homeless Chronicles (2010), Disputes (2012), 17s (2014), Melting the Ice King (2016). Gerry is a physician who’s built and staffed clinics for the marginalized as well as a Stanford professor and healthcare CEO. Currently he is devoting energy/ resources to protect democracy plus deal with climate justice, and serves on Climate Action Now’s board. Gerry’s been married since 1969 with three kids plus six grandsons, and is looking forward to future granddaughters. gerardsarnat.com
Red Rover Magazine 