We had completed all the usual deportment Conducted breakfast over silence and glances Shared our bed and kissed with out-turned faces Packed your clothes in the trunk without argument Now the wind picks up chasing birds across the lake We hurry the last boxes inside your new place We wait on a small porch as […]
Poetry 76
Noel Sikorski: Fuck
The first time I swore was on the swings in Pusan, maybe I was six. I remember because my mother caught me as I sliced the air singing fuck and shit and asshole, my feet pumping harder than my heart. But I can’t remember how I learned to cuss, as my classmates enunciated it. Children […]
Kathleen Hellen: The Fire Sermon: Follansbee Coke Plant
A rotten egg is cracked against the sky; nothing you can see beyond the scrim of smoke, the glow of furnaces, the choke. Can’t tell the chug of the machinery from barges pushing in another load of coke. No delight in things tonight: the swimming pool; the motor boat; the camper hitched out back. No […]
Nellie Bridge: Dirty Underwear
When I was young, I heard or read that you shouldn’t wear dirty underwear, in case you get in an accident so you won’t be embarrassed when they undress you. I didn’t get it — the focus on underwear in an emergency. And I’d be embarrassed in any case. And just how clean should they […]
Melissa Tuckey: Another One
Midnight divides a man one self from another scotch from the rocks I am on a wheelie chair at the kitchen table listening to complaints we go like this ‘til 3 am It feels good don’t it New Years and nothing’s changed stone angels in the backyard doorstep with its pile of snow and I […]
Phillip B. Williams: Bloodsong
Toss their heads onto the front porch. The cat leaves them as gifts for us. Blood and fur, broom sweep and hum, we do this once a week: bleach away mouse blood, feed the night air its meat, bodiless. If you would ever find the bodies I know your pity would make room for them […]