- After Hearing the News
After hearing the news, I'm giving myself the day off— I'll wrap up in an electric blanket, sip cold Sprite,
and binge on Happy Days so I can pretend I'm the Fonz —Eyyyy, he says, and then everything's apple pie.
After hearing the news, I have to call my parents to make sure their estate is in order and call my psychiatrist
to cancel our next session because all I'll do is ask for stronger pills and email my students so they know
that I'm a hermit now and they'll have to figure out how to punctuate sentences on their own. After hearing
the news, I have a newfound addiction to Pepto Bismol— the pink tube-stopping magic is the only substance
that will stay in my stomach. I've just noticed that when snow packs into the ground tightly, I can press my face
into it and become frozen like Hans Solo so maybe one day I'll wake up not feeling like Jabba the Hut's slave
after hearing the news. I'm finally going digital—no more listening to records or grandfather clocks. I'm a new man
after hearing the news, but I'm sorry to say there's no way to explain the news we've all received, but if you're like me,
you'll be relieved only when you realize that we're fucked, yes, but we should have seen this coming a long way back. [End Page 140]
Rob Stephens is an Adjunct Professor at Malone University in Canton, Ohio, where he lives with his wife Jaclyn and three children. His poems have previously appeared in Copper Nickel, Rattle, Epoch, and other magazines. He was selected by Billy Collins to win the 2015 Scotti Merrill Award to attend the Key West Literary Festival.