First Post

I chose to put a poem here that I've worked on for a while. It is by no means perfect, but I hope someone enjoys it.

Stage I

When her husband, thin as sheetrock,
speaks his news, like prodding livestock,

her nerves sear. She slaps the house plant,
burns a cigarette. How her life slants

inside his words. You can beat this. Ashes
flake on the Berber carpet. Her face flashes

in the window pane. Let’s not do
Polyanna, he says. This is measured

in years. And stages. Strange, how his voice
stabilizes. As if his spine were a force

against his torso. Tomorrow,
she could cleave her thigh bone; scrape the marrow

to a paper sack. Instead, she’ll wake to fluorescent lights,
Pepsi, Jell-o, the patient scent of formaldehyde.