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Michael Ceraolo,
with Kelley J. White
Washington Post March: Twenty-First Century Edition
A piece of the sky really was falling.
Hail rattled on the roof like golf balls,
like sour lemon drops,
like BBs shot out of a smoking barrel.
Was today going to be a good day to die?
The taste of hot iron on my tongue.
The sky a gunmetal gray
as I pulled the pistol out of my mouth.
Turned my back on the Lincoln Memorial.
I hoped to turn to stone to avoid a mess,
but there wasn't a Gorgon in sight.
Petrified, ossified, quarried, and crushed,
the stone laughed at my inability to be likewise:
she loved me like a rock.
Pop songs pop into my head at the strangest times
with the determined fury of enlightenment.
Determined to be enlightened I turn back toward the Memorial
but Abe has left his exalted seat.
The statues know when it's time to haul ass out of town.
Such knowledge has always escaped me.
The statues will meet at the White House.
Rumor has it they'll be picketing.
Their laughing signs dancing like bricks.
The march of time will rain down on those pricks.
©2005 by Michael Ceraolo, with Kelley J. White
Michael Ceraolo is a fortysomething civil servant/poet trying to overcome a middle class upbringing. Has had numerous poems published in numerous publications, and is also the author of the forthcoming book-length poem Euclid Creek: A Journey (Deep Cleveland Press).
A New Hampshire native, Kelley J. White studied at
Dartmouth College and Harvard Medical School and has
been a pediatrician in inner-city Philadelphia for
more than twenty years. Her poems have been widely
published over the past five years, including several
book collections and chapbooks, and have appeared in
numerous journals, including Exquisite Corpse, Nimrod,
Poet Lore, Rattle, and the Journal of the American
Medical Association.
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