Let The Record Show — by Dora Malech

I spent the morning trying to remember
the joke about a peanut and assault.
People dropped bombs on each other elsewhere.
I knew that many of them were at fault

and many blameless. I kept my office locked
and the lights off. The phone just kept ringing.
I didn't answer. Nor when someone knocked.
I was supposed to be doing something.

 

The author has been a visiting lecturer and primary coordinator for the MA writing program at Victoria University's Institute of Modern Letters in Wellington, New Zealand. She was a teaching-writing fellow at  the Iowa Writer's Workshop and has taught at Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. She is currently adjunct assistant professor of English at Augustana College.

Her first poetry collection, "Inside & Elsewhere," was published in 1999 in a numbered edition of 500.

I'll take one.