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Linda Lerner’s Taking the F Train (NYQ Books, 2021) was chosen as a finalist in the 2022 Paterson Poetry Prize. How It Was (2020—2021) And Is (Iniquity Press/vendetta Books, 2023) is her most recent collection. Her poems have appeared in and are forthcoming from: Gargoyle, One Art, Big City Lit, Pinyon Review, Main Street Rag, The Raven’s Perch and Maintenant, among others.

This Morning’s Buzz

A large alien looking hornet
from Asia spotted in Philadelphia
got into my head and jump started

a lifetime of scary things
like when he drank too much, turned
into someone I wanted to kill so
he’d release the person he held hostage
scary like when my father came home from
work, ranting to my mother he blamed for
everything, and she began packing her things
scary like the faces of children hiding behind
desks, what we did in grade school
to prepare for when the Russians bombed us
who didn’t, only this isn’t a rehearsal,
not everyone today will get beneath a desk
fast enough to make it home in time
to be stung by a murder hornet.
not yet

— Linda Lerner

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