(Dedicated to the good folks at the Somerset County, Maryland Health Dept.)

by Marcus Colasurdo

In a gymnasium
where the backboards are quiet
and the rims, though netted,
   utter no swish
where there are no rivalries 
or fast break buckets-
where the inside paint
   is covered with long tables
containing
   new medicine and common sense.
Where the cheerleaders double
   as player-coaches:
knowledgeable nurses
wearing matter-of-fact scrubs,
they speak in softness
   but undeniably,
they are the first stringers
        here
where there is no foul line
but instead
   rows of chairs,
   continually cleansed
for those of us come
   looking for normal
       at the tip of a needle
   plunged
  not to pain a vein,
but to bring tomorrow
to our necessary
   voluntary arms.

Getting shot. 

This is not one of those poems
   that speaks of random dope ricochets
on oblivion swarmed corners
and a six year old girl dead
   through the head. 

This is not that poem. 

This is not a verse about mail order
murder
nor pixelated plots
   that spit on the history
where once a mother
   gave her children to write.

This is not that poem.

Not the one where an 
   un-rich Black man
bleeds unarmed his years
   on a foaming siren
police bunch street.

This is not that poem. 

Not the ululating rhyme
of bullets stolen
   from the periodic chart,
making mistakes of a wedding
   for a circle of terror,
slicing through a bride
amputating a groom
ending it all
   before the very first kiss.

This is not
       that poem. 

This is the rolled sleeve
   offering of arms
to the wavering of wisps
   of an aromatic summer:
so long in the coming
so exact in the memory
so like the deep brown eyes
   of the woman
un-headlined
the one who stands before crisis
   and works-
who stabs the surface
so near my muscle
   and pulls back
     the plunger
to give me the liquid
   that returns to me
the months of my seasons.

No... this is not the poem
   about flowers and gravestone,
   though it started in a cemetery
a minute after midnight,
this is the bouquet 
   that I have finally gathered
and brought here to her
when the sun
   began to shine.  

Marcus Colasurdo is the author of 11 books and a member of Anthracite Unite. Over the years, he has worked as varied as Los Angeles taxi-cab driver to Job Corps counselor. He is the founder of the Soul Kitchen, a community meals and clothing program (in Baltimore, MD and Hazleton, PA) that currently feeds 400 folks monthly and provides various other much-needed items to needy folks in those communities.

Also by Marcus Colasurdo: Small Abundance; Bakery; Making Masks; The Simple Justice of Eating; Unchained Pierogis; Sanitation; Anthracite; Letter of Transit