Debbie Collins, he says I’m fierce

The Third Saturday in June

I was nursing some cheap gin 

at this depressing little celebration,

watching my ex-lover

kiss his simpering new wife,

her mouth puckered 

like an anus.

Pity?  No thanks,

I've got plenty, tangled

in her veil and in

his laugh.

More gin for me, the averted eyes 

around me small and mean.  

I sneak outside with my drink.

The silence never sounded better.

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Annette Volfing, Learning Finnish

The Good Days

You feel it almost more on the good days,

the way parents say Isn’t it quiet!

when their children are somewhere else;

on the good days when you’re baked through,

and tired from walking, and stand naked

in front of the mirror, trying to distinguish

sunburn from nettle sting, and the soul

peeks out of its hole like some little rodent,

and you know you can’t complain,

not after a day like that; yet you also know

that nothing’s really changed, and never will;

that there is no point to any day,

good or bad, other than to get through it,

so that it’s behind you, not in front,

not like that speckled girl in the mirror,

naked apart from her glass of wine,

her big eyes asking What now?

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Rodney Wood, When Listening Isn’t Enough

Until the Train Comes

I don’t wanna see the man on the platform / he’s depressing as the end

with his belly & operatic life / I don’t wanna see the man on the platform

with his belly & operatic life / he’s depressing as the end

with those vocal chords / those lips / that breathe of wreckage and bones

I’m glad he wants to hear my story / with those vocal chords / those lips

I’m glad he wants to hear my story / that breathe of wreckage and bones

I don’t know what else he wants me to do / shall I kiss him / embrace him

tell him lies / what’s broken / I don’t know what else he wants me to do

tell him lies / what’s broken / shall I kiss him / embrace him

he’s waiting disguised as a shadow / waiting to hear something monstrous

without thinking I roll a cigarette / he’s waiting disguised as a shadow

without thinking I roll a cigarette / waiting to hear something monstrous

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Bernadette McAloon, A Queen of Rare Mutations

Eating My Grandmother’s Words

I didn’t want the old words passed down,

mouth to mouth, womb to hip, milk to tongue to lip.

So I left them behind in larders,

shut them into sculleries, mislaid them in parlours.

Read new words, better words,

learned to conjugate subjugate and liberate.

Yet the old words haunt my kitchen,

hang suspended from the ghost of a wash-maid pulley:

peg bag, pinny, pestle,

poss stick, liberty bodice, trestle.

Less careless now, I fold them neatly into ottomans,

place and arrange them safely on dressers.

With no daughter to bequeath them to,

I’ll have to take them with me. Eat the old words,

swallow them whole, commit them to the ground

with me: bone, dust, peg bag, soul.

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Andrea L. Fry, Poisons & Antidotes

Simple Weapons

No subterfuge

in ax or club.

Rocks bound

by crisscrossed straps

to thick, wooden handles,

loutish thugs,

their purpose made public

well before the raised hand.

Single-minded in their arc

to hurt.

Their beginning is their middle

is their end.

The good man who carries them

will perish

in his savage honesty

mid-scream

by a single arrow

dipped in tubocurarine.

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