MOLOTOV COCKTAIL

They prepared me in the previous century
Those faces in the photograph
Whose liver was seared alive
In the acid of a thousand dry martinis
Who sampled a diet
Of laxatives and diuretics
Barbiturates designed
For those whose code was scrambled
At the ancestral tryst
My clock is set for detonation.



THE CORONER'S REPORT

Our investigation disclosed no sharply etched memories
True she did dislike duets
Abhorred skating in pairs
Preferred the ball machine to a partner on the courts
Always teed off alone
Single handed her sloop at sunset

She jogged on abandoned beaches and walkways declared unsound
Cycled the back paths only
Hiked unmarked trails
Spread her sleeping bag beside seldom visited streams

While others honed the flutter kick
Rounded an arc in their back stroke
She plunged into the trough at the center
Where the present enters a conduit with no exit.



NO FAMILIAR MOMENT

There's no familiar moment for the vacant stare
That shrouds the wing-backed chair
Like fog on the Golden Gate Bridge
No familiar moment for fluid to invade
The lung, cataracts to crust
The lens, waste to flood
The kidneys like undigested dung
No familiar moment for memories to thin
The heart to fail
No familiar moment to monitor
The baby's breath or the mother's respirator.


Suzanne R. Harvey is a member of the Academy of American Poets. For almost two decades she
lectured in the English Department at Stanford University in California. She is now retired. In addition, for a semester, she was a visiting lecturer in the English Department at the University of California at Berkeley, and for almost a decade she was an instructor in the Publishing Program at the University of California at Berkeley Extension.