Category: poetry
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Eleven Years
He gets confused sometimes— gets up, walks a few steps, –pauses– looks blankly ahead then turns around, sits back down slowly. The doctor says it’s dementia; it’s just the beginning, really. It’s in his eyes, though: everything. He’s not forgotten anything; I’ve not, either— not the way he sat with me quietly through the years:…
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Swallow
I forget my reasons for staying, saying instead it’s what’s right– wrong, again. Again, I swallow it all: the anger, the regret. But it won’t stay down, as I do. It rises, likes the hot air you speak, corrodes the ceiling, takes my breath, leaves me gasping, choking on what you could not swallow. The indignant, after all, have no room for their own mistakes. Originally published at Melancholy Hyperbole, found here.
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Interview with Rachel Nix, Issue 6’s Poetry Contest Winner
Originally posted on Bop Dead City: Our first interview for this go-around is with Rachel Nix, who was so kind as to give us two poems: “Kathryn,” which won the contest, and “Acreage.” It’s always nice to get submissions from fellow Southerners (even though I’m really just a carpetbagger), especially gracious Alabamians like Rachel. Describe…
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Olene’s Elegy
Oh January, you cannot bury the beauty of the worth born into your care, more than many years ago. End all you like, but your last day will be celebrated evermore and everafter the end of September attempts to steal your glory. You see, hearts know nothing of calendars or finality. February will follow you…
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Split
I draw fault lines in your quake, shaking at the symmetry in which we are divided; you are not the world I once woke to, and I am no more the earth you dug into with callused hands that craved our growth. There is only air between us, dense as it is, obscuring our views,…
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Airing
I can hear the television blaring and I just want silence or chaos or maybe just a cup of coffee; the kind you’d tell me to go make a fresh pot of when I would drop by, without knocking, and without an invitation to sit in that chair, the one with the not-hardly but probably-once-was…
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Push
By the book, I am damned. Commands meant to be followed by the faith-filled were swallowed without thought, then hollowed those followers out. Now, to me, they look for a nod, maybe even an amen and then they profess the word quoted, but misread and send me off damned as a do-gooder with no pull.…
Rachel Nix 