THE STATE OF FLORIDA

by Alan Catlin

"Information. We need Information."
"You won't get it!"
"By hook or by crook, we will."
          --The Prisoner TV Series Refrain

                   Emergency Room, Sanford, Florida 2004

Just beyond the sliding automatic door,
the sign above the window says,
Information, but there is no one manning
the station, no computer, no switchboard
for referrals.  Prospective patients, those
still standing, not in shock, not profusely
bleeding, not in cardiac arrest look for
guidance, an information system, a clue.
See interview rooms, people behind closed
doors, double thick panes of glass taking
notes, recording basic facts, names, dates,
places, types of insurance carriers, personal
physician referrals----see the waiting room
filled with people watching the world network
news according to Fox, some dozing or holding
ice packs to afflicted areas, others in wheelchairs,
new arrivals and the old, blood soaked compresses,
hastily splinted limbs, a sign that says something
about Triage services, register here.  Attempting
to Check in at No Information window does
no good, that window is a red herring, a false
clue like Miss Marple in the Conservancy
with an Uzi or President Bush on a Fact Finding
Mission to-----, attempting to engage security
guards writing on a time ledger sheet at window
desk compounds your mistake, angers the scribe
recording the valuable minutes of his day,
each one accounted for especially the present,
guaranteed by contract, smoke break, nothing
must interfere, especially the helpless and confused
patients to be, formulating questions that must
never be asked of the wrong personnel, hastily
slamming shut sliding No Information window,
no one else around not waiting to ask, not even
a number to take as the door slides open again,
admitting more people to inquire at No Information
desk, unmanned once again as security guard leaves
the area, never once looking back or referring
puzzled onlookers to Triage waiting area sign
unreadable from where they stand with a crowd
of others, some crying out for some sort of help
that is answered by an irate nurse like person calling
out, "Everyone must wait their turn.  It's very
crowded here, so be patient.  Anyone getting out
of line will be subject to arrest as the sign clearly
states!" referring to a Everyone Must Read sign
that cannot be seen from the entrance, cannot be read
by the illiterate, the Hispanics, the blinded by
wood alcohol resins, hallucinating drug overdosed
howlers, the desperate and the dying waiting to be seen.  


Alan Catlin has published numerous chapbooks and full-length books of poetry and prose, the latest of which, from Pygmy Forest Press, is Alien Nation.

THE ELECT

by Sondra Zeidenstein

Image source: Wicked Mike

I woke from a dream
in which I had curly hair,
a bushel of it, unkempt,
uncombable, beyond
messing with
and I was smiling,
I who have always had
scanty hair, flat
to my narrow Rumanian
Jewish skull. I didn’t care
that it wasn’t beautiful,
just that there was
so much of it.

So I’m slow this morning
letting myself down
into reality, the disrepair
our ship of state displays
two days after we won
by one percent, the victory,
a gift from Blacks and Hispanics,
our traditional country
gone, said a pundit.

But my traditional country
has always been
diverse and I remember
how proud I was to be
standing in line in the gym
at school next to the one
black girl in my grade
and when we were told
to hold hands to our left
and our right, my brain
hesitated a second, imagining
the other to whom I’d never
spoken and then
without looking at her,
since we faced forward
so stiffly, I reached sideways
took her hand, and she
took mine. She was thin, my height,
I can’t recall her name,

but that her hand was
slighter than I expected,
her fingers without grasp
to reach for what she knew
by now at twelve
did not belong to her,
her palm flat and dry,

and I felt secretly proud
that I was called on
to extend my privilege
and well being, to someone
less sure of what if anything
belonged to her and I lived
for a moment joined, saying
to my proud, ignorant self,
what I have she must have too.
Here. Take it.

So Obama won again.
He walked on stage at two
in the morning when I could
barely stay awake and his women
wore taffeta, the girls’ legs
exposed above the knees,
their hair flattened and shining
under the lights, their parents
never leaving them for an instant
under the roars of thousands
joined as I had been
seventy years ago
at Morningside School.
This family had it all
for a moment in our country,
something I always believed in.
I was part of it or
I was nothing.


Sondra Zeidenstein is a poet and publisher of Chicory Blue Press. She has published three books of poems, including A Detail in that Story and Contraries and edited several anthologies, including A Wider Giving: Women Writing after a Long Silence.