Alec Solomita’s fiction has appeared in the Southwest Review, The Mississippi Review, Southword Journal, and The Drum (audio), among other publications. He was shortlisted by the Bridport Prize and Southword Journal. His poetry has appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, Gnashing Teeth Publishing, The Galway Review, Bold + Italic, Litbreak, Subterranean Blue Poetry, The Blue Nib, Red Dirt Forum, and elsewhere.  His chapbook, “Do Not Forsake Me,” was published in 2017 and is still available at Finishing Line Press and Amazon. His first full-length book of poetry was published last April by Kelsay Press. He’s working on another. He lives in Massachusetts.

---

Willie

I knew him twenty yards away,
Willie coming right at me.
We’d have to say hello.
Funny thing about aging —
we all change but really don’t,
still being us and all.

Willie had problems from the start.
A special kid, born too soon,
Minor brain impairment,
walks with a limp, talks in staccato.
Known him forever.
But Willie got old, too,

though he’ll always be Willie.
Only last week, he
came by for dinner.
Sweet man still, still talks
like a woodpecker.
The kids are fond of him.

Now sixty-year-old Willie
halts my way
on the narrow sidewalk.
As I get ready to greet him,
he walks right by.

Poor Willie, eyes to the sky,
still in Willie’s world.

---

Hedges

At night my bedroom is nearly silent.
I wear ear plugs anyway to be sure
that a passing three o’clock motorcycle
won’t wake me up.

I have friends, a married couple,
who protect themselves from
bringing a child into the world.
I personally think they overdo it.

She takes the pill and wears
a diaphragm. He wears two
condoms and pulls out at
the moment of crisis.

I have a friend who always
wears three masks, even now.
He doesn’t have a girlfriend.
I don’t know if it’s the masks.

I have a friend who won’t fly
because he thinks his feet smell.

The fact is I do know all these people
but they aren’t really friends,
at least not close friends.
I tend to be agoraphobic.

---

I Wake in Our Bed

I wake in our bed with just me.
It’s okay, same sex marriage is legal
here in Massachusetts. And now
weed is, too, ta da!
We like to think of ourselves as
the official host of the decline of the West.
The People’s Republic of Cambridge,
named after a regime that murdered
ten to twenty million people.

Who was that cartoon character on the
Rocky and Bullwinkle Show? Captain Peter
“Wrong Way” Peachfuzz. He’s
the model here for all the right-thinking
wrong-waying, first-of-May feting crowd.
But I’m straying. What I really mean,
politics aside, is I’d rather wake up with you.