At This Moment

by Steven Searcy

Heads are hitting pillows in hospitals, with groans,

surrounded by the bleeps of meters, starkly sterile,

heads are hitting pillows with whispering and moans,

caressing, pressing, urgent, ringed by strewn apparel,

pillows are hitting heads as cousins laugh and shriek,

another late night pillow fight’s delightful smash,

inflated pillows are hitting heads as car hoods crack

and crumple—screams and tears—blindsided by a crash,

scalpels are extracting tumors, knives are cutting

tomatoes, swords defend, and switchblades plunge with fury,

eyes are flaring open, gazing, darting, shutting,

mouths spit and kiss and bless and hiss and charm the jury,

the sky goes golden red: day’s end and day’s beginning—

the earth is stable ground and wildly whirling, spinning.

*awarded 1st Special Merit in the "Modern Sonnets" category in the 2024 Helen Schaible International Sonnet Contest

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Steven Searcy is the author of Below the Brightness (Solum Literary Press, 2024). His poems have appeared in Southern Poetry Review, Commonweal, Atlanta Review, The Windhover, New Verse Review, and elsewhere. He lives with his wife and four sons in Georgia.