Lisa Vihos

CONTACT:
Email: lisavihos@gmail.com
Website & Blog: lisavihos.com
Photo Courtesy: Laura Shovan

BIO:
Lisa Vihos’s poems have appeared in numerous poetry journals, both print and online. She has published four chapbooks, had two Pushcart Prize nominations, and received awards from the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets and the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts & Letters. She is a founding editor of Stoneboat Literary Journal and the Sheboygan organizer for 100 Thousand Poets for Change. In 2020, she was named the first poet laureate of Sheboygan.

PUBLICATIONS:
A Brief History of Mail (Pebblebrook Press, 2011) – received honorable mention in WFOP's 2012 chapbook contest.

The Accidental Present (Finishing Line Press, 2012)

This Particular Heaven (Kelsay Books, 2017)

Fan Mail from Some Flounder (Main Street Rag, 2018)

Poetry

In the Pick ‘N Save Parking Lot

Looking over
the top of my mask
my glasses already steamed,
I meet your eyes, stranger,
and we smile.

We cannot see these smiles
but we know we are smiling.
The twinkle in the eye tells all.
We raise our hands in silent salute.

Nothing could have prepared us
for this moment, or maybe
everything did.
If only our hands could meet,
right here, we’d become a prayer.

We know we are members
of the same tribe,
fighting an insidious evil
that flourishes on the breath,
on the wind, and has run
unchecked in all the lies of now,
and in all the lies past.
Let it be unchecked no more.

In the journey towards justice,
there is just us, essential prophets
seeing beyond the mask.

Lesson at the Check Point

Please be advised that snow globes
are not allowed through the security check point.
                        --LaGuardia Airport sign

Is this because of the snow? Or because of the little houses
that nestle inside the snow?

I imagine it is because of the liquid
and the potential to inject an explosive

through the dome of the glass. Evil is inserted every day
into our minds, under our skin, through the iCloud,

through layers of data that shred the ozone
(an ozone held together by scotch tape, chicken wire

and American Idol.)  One day, someone picks us up,
shakes us, and all hell breaks loose. Worlds collide.

The very equilibrium we once believed in,
cast aside by a wave of the hand. While some God,

somewhere, waits at a check point, watching
for the terrorist in each of us,

wary of small things, like six ounce jars
of olive spread, beard trimming scissors, and yes, 

snow globes. These things tucked in between the socks
and underwear, waiting to destroy us.

This poem won First Place in the 2015 Wisconsin People and Ideas Poetry Contest