Fall Sick (poem)

Fall Sick

Unlikely partners, the woman who owns the teacup shop

and her neighbor Moses Harry the cronut baker

Night and day, for contrast, these inquisitive elders

At the seat of government, on someone’s behalf

(a background billionaire?) corruption runs rife

So it seems, for the murder rate, in an unvisited burg

unshadowed by the sprawling complex

of a pharmaceutical factory, not campused by a college

The murder rate is about one in three thousand

this raises no eyebrow at the statehouse

Often it’s the new people

never mind that a town barely incorporated

boasts quite the showing of crockery fanciers

Same with the other downtown characters

a decade running their quirky stores

(but in backstory, for many years more)

Everyone here spends money like water

the book dealer with Amazon doesn’t truck

so they must all be amazing readers

the clothing boutique sells party togs

(as rich families live here, and have dress up parties…)

while the doctor who wouldn’t have time for them all

does, every sufferer met in the course

has been treated by young doctor Lemon

an amateur naturalist who knows her poisons

Moses and Tish this time find the body is

that brazen filmmaker’s, who’d rubbed so many

the wrong way…well, no one in Meadowsweet wants

put on the map

“You don’t kill over an insult,” Moses says.

Don’t you, though? It’s 2020

But surely in Meadowsweet we’re all sane

“An accident, and a panic,” Tish tries.

Dr. Lemon would know, but it looks like the Jeep

backed over him twice

Fall Sick

The Lab-Grown Brain Makes Philosophy

(2020, Stephanie Foster)