Philip C. Kolin

The Spanish Lady

Philip C. Kolin

New York City, Winter 1918

We lived in a tenement where half the doors were draped with black crepe. Long coughing spells carried down the hallways, stoked by the coal-less chill. The city was saturated

with colds. Fines were issued for spitting on the sidewalk. Hearses trotted past our windows hour after hour. Nights we left the windows open to kill the germs.

Masked mail carriers looked like ghosts. The Spanish Lady killed more of our soldiers than the Germans had. We wore red because the flu didn't like that color,

and left slice onions out at night to keep from getting sick. We quaffed Pluto Water to wash out germs, even if it killed you. We too were on a death watch: our own.

Monkey Grass

Philip C. Kolin

She planted monkey grass all up and down her steep driveway each spring. It was her green menagerie.

Her plant keeper outfit included large swaths of sweat just underneath a large straw hat, the fringe extending

into the cloudless sky surrounding her. She joked the grass marked the border between her house and heaven's gate.

It happily endured generations of kids' bikes, drivers and their hurrying, crushing tires, and the scorching Mississippi sun

that tried to wilt it brown. But it survived many seasons because of her watering and pruning; it even stood

in a strong wind. But then she was gone, and relatives forgot the monkeys; but their drooping crowns looked like sad straw hats.

Philip C. Kolin is the distinguished Professor of English Emeritus at the University of Southern Mississippi. He has published over 40 books including 14 collections of poetry, the most recent being Americorona (Wipf & Stock, 2021).