by Gerard Sarnat

Unplanned obsolescent
at seventy-one, awkward in-be-
tweenness

reminds me
of when I was seventeen
but instead of tumescence,

diminution
whose operating systems wheeze
this side of addled.

Hippies, we imagined
living together forever
on communes;

now those of us left
pool resources for
burial plots and flowers.

Gerard Sarnat is the author of two critically acclaimed poetry collections, 2010’s HOMELESS CHRONICLES from Abraham to Burning Man and 2012’s Disputes. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in eighty or so journals and anthologies. Harvard and Stanford educated, Gerry’s a physician who’s set up and staffed clinics for the disenfranchised, a CEO of health care organizations, and Stanford professor. For “The Huffington Post” review and more; visit GerardSarnat.com. The pieces published in Empty Sink Publishing may appear in his third collection, 17s, in which every poem, stanza or line has 17 syllables.