Eighty Percent

by Sheila Wellehan

People wondered why anyone
would drink hand sanitizer.
The response to the headline
CDC says people are dying
after drinking hand sanitizer
was ridicule. The news of impaired vision
and seizures, hospitalizations and deaths,
prompted funny gifs and emoticons
as well as witticisms like
Let them drink it. Kill the stupids.

Decades after leaving rehab,
the first thing that hit me
when I read my prized bottle’s label
was its alcohol content.
If I’d never gotten sober
and I was broke or stores closed,
hand sanitizer would be a tempting beverage –
eighty percent alcohol
would have a nice kick.
Eighty percent might just do the trick.

Sheila Wellehan‘s poetry is featured or forthcoming in The Night Heron Barks, Rust + Moth, Thimble Literary Magazine, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Whale Road Review, and many other journals and anthologies. She lives in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. Arabella Luna Friedland is a visual artist and writer based in New York City. She’s influenced by a childhood with cartoons, a classical education in anatomy and life drawing, and a firm belief that all art — is a portrait.