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in the free chapbook
Challenge of Night and Day,
and Chicago Poems

by Michael Lee Johnson
(released 07/28/10) 		     hallenge of Night and Day, and Chicago Poems      Challenge of Night and Day, and Chicago Poems      you can also get this writing
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with either a Chicago day or Chicago night cover!
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Challenge of Night and Day,
and Chicago Poems
Order this writing in the 2010 poetry collection book

An Open Book		 An Open Book - 2010 poetry collection book click on the book cover
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Rod-Stroked Survival, With a Deadly Hammer

Michael Lee Johnson

Rebecca fantasized that life was a lottery ticket or a pull of a lever,
that one of the bunch in her pocket was a winner or the slots were a redeemer;
but life itself was not real that was strictly for the mentally insane at the Elgin
Mental Institution.
She gambled her savings away on a riverboat
stuck in mud on a riverbank, the Grand Victoria, in Elgin, Illinois.
Her bare feet were always propped up on wooden chair;
a cigarette drooped from her lips like morning fog.
She always dreamed of traveling, not nightmares.
But she couldn’t overcome, overcome,
the terrorist ordeal of the German siege of Leningrad.
She was a foreigner now; she is a foreigner for good.
Her first husband died after spending a lifetime in prison
with stinging nettles in his toes and feet; the second
husband died of hunger when there were no more rats
to feed on, after many fights in prison for the last remains.
What does a poet know of suffering?
Rebecca has rod stroked survival with a deadly mallet.
She gambles nickels, dimes, quarters, tokens tossed away,
living a penniless life for grandchildren who hardly know her name.
Rebecca fantasized that life was a lottery ticket or the pull of a lever.



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