My Virtual Son,

Sharon Kennedy-Nolle
Published on June 1, 2023

In the same pjs for the past two months,
bedroom door closed,
all meals desk-side, dishes stacked, bathing bimonthly,
with your running excuse, “I have class; I have homework,”
just like the other pandemic senior Zoomers.
Your teachers report you’re a model citizen.

Sometimes fear is funny,
as we creep around your anger,
careful not to disturb routine
(if even one bottle in your “pill hill”
tin box is out of place, there’s hell to pay).
And if we confront, demand time
off the laptop, cell
you snarl, you bully:

You’ve got one son in the grave,
and another, mentally ill, on the way…

So what about me, huh?
What will I become?

as if we don’t know.
 

Genre: 
Poetry
Author Bio: 

A graduate of Vassar College, Sharon Kennedy-Nolle received an MFA from the Writers’ Workshop as well as a doctoral degree in nineteenth-century American literature from the University of Iowa. She also holds MAs from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University and New York University. In addition to scholarly publications, her poetry has appeared in many journals. Her chapbook, Black Wick: Selected Elegies was a semi-finalist for the 2018 Tupelo Snowbound Chapbook Contest. Chosen as the 2020 Chapbook Editor’s Pick by Variant Literature Press, Black Wick: Selected Elegies was published in 2021. Kennedy-Nolle was winner of the New Ohio Review’s 2021 creative writing contest. Her full-length manuscript, Black Wick: The Collected Elegies was chosen as a 2021 finalist for the Black Lawrence Press’s St. Lawrence Book Award, a 2021 and 2022 semifinalist for the University of Wisconsin Poetry Series' Brittingham and Felix Pollak Prizes, and a 2022 semifinalist for the Two Sylvias Press’ Wilder Prize and for the Brick Road Poetry Contest. Recently appointed the Poet Laureate of Sullivan County for 2022-2024, she lives and teaches in New York.

Issue: 
62