The Ambulance
ED DOERR

I swear the driver
called himself Charon
as he loaded me
onto his rig,
city lights clouding
the windows
like night’s last breath.

He tells me
to stop squirming
as he tightens straps
across my chest,
but their Velcro bite
just makes it worse.

How to explain that,
more than anything,
I just need to make sure
I have change
for a dollar?



Ed Doerr’s work appeared most recently in One Teen Story, Water/Stone Review, The Tishman Review, Firewords Quarterly, and the New York Times bestselling collection It All Changed In An Instant, among others. When he’s not writing, he teaches middle school English in New Jersey, where he lives with his wife and has recently completed a masters degree in Creative Writing from Fairleigh Dickinson University.