by Jim Ross
Complicity
On October 7th while you were massaging your kale
& sipping your Madagascar hot chocolate, a young
girl witnessed her sister being shot in the throat.
Despite her cries for help, she bled out.
You didn’t want to use your hands to soften the rough
edges. Instead, you watched the news on your kitchen TV
& shrugged when your husband walked into the room.
Such a shame you tell him. What? he asks.
Oh, never mind.
John Dorroh has been writing ever since he was evacuated from his mother’s uterus in 1953. His first poem was scribbled on the bathroom walls with a cardinal-red lipstick. When he was in high school, his family warned him that his Letters to the Editor in the city newspaper would make some waves. He’s been making waves and rocking the boat ever since. Six of his poems were nominated for Best of the Net. Over 400 others have appeared in over 100 journals including River Heron, Kissing Dynamite, Boston College’s Post Road, Feral, and Thin Air. If he were an animal, he’d definitely be a brown bear with an appetite for berries and hot Thai food. He lives in small-town Illinois near St. Louis.
Jim Ross jumped into creative pursuits in 2015 after a rewarding research career. With graduate degree from Howard University, in ten years he’s published nonfiction, fiction, poetry, photography, hybrid, interviews, and plays in over 200 journals on five continents. Best-of-the-Net nominated in nonfiction and art, his photo publications include Barnstorm, Camas, Feral, Phoebe, and Stonecoast. Photo-essays include Burningword, Kestrel, Litro, New World Writing, Pilgrimage, Sweet, and Typehouse. Jim’s family splits time between city and mountains.