Category: Poetry
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My Sister the Fire
Anna came in hot / told Mom she was having / an abortion / Mom said wait / and didn’t she know Mom and Dad / had been trying / to have another baby / and no they couldn’t / could she? / do it / for her mother? / Anna crackled and heaved molten…
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If You Get This Message
Help. I can’t stop opening my phone. Someone has placed my life on a high shelf where I cannot reach it. Help me. I keep toying with time like it isn’t a tiger on fire. Worse, my interest in the rhyme between satiety and society makes me full. When it doesn’t, I try to remember…
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I PASSED MY EX ON CLAY STREET ON WEDNESDAY MORNING
and a tenderness swept over my skin for the man who knew my thighs, all fathappy, in younger years. We were good, ya know, sometimes. And here he was oblivious to my observation— for a swift, floating moment—we were alone again: me watching, he not noticing. The thing we once had, sinewtorn by vultures, briefly…
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The Last Resurrection I’ll Try Since You Died: please come
and bring wax. I’ve used all of mine even fogged holiday candles. I’ve burnt a string run through hard fat from my bacon. Please. Or I’ll be forced to rob bees at knifepoint and politely collect their products for months. Please bring a crystal ball. I asked around but no-body carries anything round in their…
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The Last Resurrection I’ll Try Since You Died: please come
and bring wax. I’ve used all of mine even fogged holiday candles. I’ve burnt a string run through hard fat from my bacon. Please. Or I’ll be forced to rob bees at knifepoint and politely collect their products for months. Please bring a crystal ball. I asked around but no-body carries anything round in their…
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Melon
That moment before grief destroys us, We sit eating the sweetest melon, Not knowing the sweetness until Much later, when the first grade Is empty-eyed, everyone Alone now as we are overtaken Without knowing it yet, Thinking this cannot be … [Click here to purchase a copy of the magazine]
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Self Portrait as Steward of Cats in Bags
Before you opened the bag, Sex could’ve been something sleek, a jaguar or puma, but it turned out to be a scraggly orange cat who leaves messes and claws at strangers and yowls for attention all through the night. Spend enough time with Sex and you no longer hope it’ll fix anything; it’s just another…
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Free Fall
36 feet of earth risen from the ground. Sometimes the earth itself raises a hand in prayer. Sand spilling down its face, the hill across the blacktop from our cheap apartment sang invitation. Sang freedom. So we ran, clambered up its almost impossible angle until we stood perched atop a lip of dirt as thin…
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An Appalachian Postcard
I want to find the porch of the poem. I think if I could just stand there with one fist pressed hard against the ache at the base of my spine, if I could stare off toward the sea of neighboring mountaintops whose clouds threaten to make common cause with my own darknesses – then…
