In the Dark of Night
Trucks and horse-drawn vans rumble through Lexington’s streets
hauling the dead to Union Station. Pyramids of caskets
sway precariously, ten on the first layer up to poignant oneness.
A crying need for coffins echoes where lumbermen lie
in their beds, felled by influenza.
Doctors’ prescriptions and home inventions proliferate:
rot-gut whiskey or the real deal, fresh-cut onions,
snake oil liniment, laxatives, camphor, quinine,
asafetida in red flannel hung from a neck cord,
gravy or Oxo beef bouillon, fumes (nitrous oxide? Opium?),
blood-letting, saltwater gargles,
exorcism.
10 thoughts on "In the Dark of Night"
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Ohhhh, I love this poem and where it landed! Fantastic write!
Gosh! Thank you
lest we not forget the past! well done!
I think you’ll like the pantoum I plan to post tomorrow, “Deja vu.”
That list is so powerful!
Thank you. I turn up really interesting information in my research. The “exorcism” surprised me. LoL
A powerful look into history, and great research. An especially pleasing poem!
Thanks ever so much, Greg!
Whoa! Got increasingly intense until i actually found the ending perfect. Fine work! (say, EE, you write essays too? Would like to read ‘em if you do)
Thank you for your kind comments, Sally. Yes, I do write essays occasionally. One was published in the very last issue of The Atherton Review before the pandemic led to its demise. I’ve been meaning to pusue the genre with more intent, but at the moment my poetry collection on Lexington during Prohibition and a novel that bounces between present day and Medieval France have me rather occupied. LoL