Paul Lojeski

On A Sunny Day

I was reading a book at the beach under a blue
umbrella when a young beauty in a bikini passed
before me.

Be assured I starred not because she was half-naked
as would normally be my want but because her skin
was highly defamed by a swarm of swirling tattoos.

There were black crosses, snarling red serpents,
and a mushroom cloud on her muscular thigh. Also
the words “bad bitch” scrolled across her tanned back.

She carried the death of science and reason like a patriot
wrapped in the flag. I felt stupid holding a book when
I should’ve been sharpening a blade.


A Nurse In Need

A handsome young man is bent over a bench, puking his
guts out in bright sunlight. She’s on lunch from nursing the sick
and wounded over at the local ER so she’s got no time for the
wicked hitting the wailing wall. After hours of saving the
undeserving, she wants to cry out, “Oh, mercy be mine!”

She opens the paper bag, trying to fight off the memory of her
sweet son blown to bits near a palm tree under the same stinking
sun hurting her head right then by the blue Hudson. She’d like to
reach up and rip the fucking thing out of the sky.

But she hears the bench guy retching and choking and turns to see
him fall. She drops the tuna sandwich and rushes to his side, pounding
on his chest, thinking of her baby with each blow. If only she’d been there
to stop his blood from bleeding all over that foreign road, if only this
drunken, blacked-out boy was her boy, if only she’d had a second chance.


Say So Long To The Sun

Sooner or later the sun is going to blow
and we’re going bye-bye. Oddly, this
fact elicits no comment from crowds

at football games, rock concerts, gun shows
or religious meetings. Newscasts ignore
the doom crawling our way, instead

showing fat people dieting with vampires
and everything fifty percent off till Thursday.
Sometimes a scientist points out the super nova

facts to a small group of troublemakers who
write letters to Congress after but what can
be done about the sun imploding ? politicians

ask from big leather chairs. My Uncle John
says it’d take unprecedented cooperation
and fleets of spaceships sweeping the

galaxies looking for suitable planets to settle on.
I wonder what we’d take with us but then he says
it’ll never happen because we’re idiots.

It’s late August and I’m looking out the window
at tall trees speckled in light. I’m glad I won’t
be here that last day, the day the sun sleeps.


I'm No Pacifist

my friend said at brunch,
summer bees bumbling
round yellow flowers
by the porch.

No such animal, anyway,
he added, syrup dripping
off steamy pancakes
stacked high and I said

nothing, thinking there’re
bears up in those woods,
hunting honey. I wanted
to run with them.


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