This week, ACM is posting poetry every weekday.
THE LATE LATE SHOW
You hear a siren break the darkness and awake
to hopeful thoughts that say, Don’t be negative,
think, they’re speeding to save someone, think,
they’re bringing help, but you can’t. You think,
Someone’s in distress, someone beyond help,
buried alive under this irrevocable universe,
then you try, Help yourself while there’s still time,
or The Lord helps him who helps himself,
but the siren will not stop. Nothing will do.
Your wrappings refuse to give you up; they bunch
under your back and cut you with wrinkles.
You are forced to think very formally, very
philosophically, Someday a siren will come for you,
and you hold your breath, rub your eyes, roll
with a groan to flick on the late Late Late Show.
The room fills with gray light and flickering shadows,
and the implacable siren wails and wails and wails.
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George Thomas, member of the Silent Generation, Navy veteran and retired machinist, earned an MFA at Eastern Washington University where he co-founded and edited Willow Springs. Later he published and edited the monthly George & Mertie’s Place for six years. His work has appeared over the years in Anglo-Welsh Review, Willow Springs, Bellowing Ark, Crab Creek Review, 50plusnorthwest, Kestrel, Southern Poetry Review and North Dakota Quarterly to name a few. His poetry is scheduled to appear in CultureCult, Ink In Thirds and Another Chicago Magazine thus far in 2025. He is the author of five novels, nearly a thousand poems, endless essays, several reviews and many short stories. Lately, he’s been attempting science fiction and fantasy.
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Syd Brewster is a Black American writer based in the Hudson Valley. Her writing has been featured in Sink Hollow and God’s Cruel Joke. You can find her on Instagram @sydbrews.
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Another Chicago Magazine 