“Down the Rabbit Hole” © Edward Michael Supranowicz

 

Housing Officer

Emotional conflicts in department

Received poor advice from supervisor

Regarding dismissal of assistant

Managing was not handled properly

Assistant subsequently reinstated

Told to develop a rent increase plan

Prepared a detailed fifty page report

Supervisor said increase was too small

And effected a much larger increase

Students organized a large rent strike

Patient had symptoms at home

Just thinking about returning to work

Complains of severe wheezing

And paroxysmal tightness; he reports

Inability to run for the bus

Inability to wash his car

Inability to work in his garden

Inability to walk rapidly

He can climb one flight of stairs

He has not attempted two or three flights

Fearing onset of prolonged wheezing

 

Ernie Brill has published his poetry and fiction widely in the US and Canada (Atherton Review, River Styx, Ice Flow Press (Toronto), Other Voices, pif, Oxford University Press, Harbor (British Columbia, and others.
He has a chameleoesque ability to hear and entered different voices from different walks and alleys of life.
He received his BA and MA from San Francisco State College where he was deeply involved in the longest student strike against racism in American history from November 6 to May 10 that established the first Black Studies Department in the country and an entire School of Ethnic Studies that still exists today and helped change the face of higher education in the US despite a constant police-occcupied campus, over 750 arrests”s, and over fifty faculty firings and student blacklistings.
Brill’s favorite writes include Virginia Woolf, Tom Kromer, Hyesoon Kim, Gwendolyn Brooks, Mahmoud Darwish, Pedro Petri, Richard Wright.

Edward Michael Supranowicz has had artwork and poems published in the US and other countries. Both sides of his family worked in the coalmines and steel mills of Appalachia.