As I bemoan covidity, I secretly
recognize karma for my younger
self’s joy when the thermometer
shot up—“that’s why they call it
quicksilver,” my mother said—
beyond 100 and school was
“out of the question” leaving me
instead to answer TV quiz show
questions and watch the Stooges
and Laurel and Hardy every day
till quicksilver ebbed into mercury
so to fill the twenty-four hours
before a clean bill was declared
the finger paints were unboxed
for the high point of recuperation:
ten digits squishing sloppily into
a rainbow of gushing pudding jars
to smear fine messes of dreams
and nightmares on butcher paper.
Today, digits flash temperatures;
I plunge my finger into an oximeter.
Expat New Yorker James Penha (he/him) has lived for the past three decades in Indonesia. Nominated for Pushcart Prizes in fiction and poetry, his work is widely published in journals and anthologies. His newest chapbook of poems, American Daguerreotypes, is available for Kindle. His essays have appeared in The New York Daily News and The New York Times. Penha edits The New Verse News, an online journal of current-events poetry.
Latest posts by James Penha (see all)
- Quicksilver - March 19, 2024
- Caught - June 8, 2022