Photo credit: Cedric Terrell
Casualty Notification
The Only News I know / Is Bulletins all Day / From Immortality.
– Emily Dickinson
Switch channels, stop
the breaking news,
press mute to hush
the anchorman’s reviews
of war, his litany
of each device
and bomb gone off today.
Silence the price
of bread or medicare
or gasoline.
Make the black pinpoint
on the TV screen.
Unplug the blackbox
from the mouth of the wall.
Uncradle the phone so
nobody can call.
Let the venetian blinds
blind everyone
to what’s outside—the dead,
indifferent sun,
the car pulled up along
the curb, the vexed
men in uniforms
looking for next
of kin. They bring a check
to pay the cost
of grieving. Their dark sedan
puffs out exhaust.
And now, the only sound
a daybird singing,
the only bulletin
a doorbell ringing.
Previously appeared in West Branch (issue 74, Spring 2014)
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Jehanne Dubrow is the author of four poetry collections, including Red Army Red and Stateside (Northwestern University Press, 2012 and 2010), and is the co-editor of The Book of Scented Things: 100 Contemporary Poems About Perfume (Literary House Press, 2014). In 2015, University of New Mexico Press will publish her fifth book, The Arranged Marriage. Her work has appeared in Southern Review, The New England Review, and Prairie Schooner. She is the Director of the Rose O’Neill Literary House and an Associate Professor of creative writing at Washington College, where she edits the national literary journal, Cherry Tree.
