Scars, Tears, and Wounds Like Weapons: The Poetry
By SoulFire77
“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”
— Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi (13th century)
- 355 reads
"I'm Not Finished."
Three days after we put her in the ground, I heard her voice in the kitchen - not a memory, not the echo grief makes of the dead, but her voice, her...
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- 428 reads
Atlas of the Drowned Country
The realtor calls it waterfront. The water is in the kitchen. We sleep upstairs. We've always slept upstairs. The first floor belongs to the crabs...
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- 460 reads
Hold Still
I was here before the walls. This was forest once. Before that, swamp. Before that, sea. I don't remember what came before the sea. I was there. I...
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- 791 reads
Malachi's Last Report
The chimneys stand like ribs now. The river stopped years ago. Someone is still whistling somewhere a tune that's forgotten what it was for. There...
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- 520 reads
Rehearsel
I found a bone in the yard last week that fit my hand too well. I told myself: coincidence. I told myself: the world is full of things shaped like us...
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- 526 reads
Snap Decision
I find her reading glasses on the counter where she always left them, beside the bowl she used for keys she never found again. I find the knife she...
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- 482 reads
The Field Behind the House
I asked my daughter what she was waving at through the window, and she said, the man in the field. There is no man in the field. There is only the...
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- 534 reads
The Repeater
This time, Sam chooses to turn right and starts walking. The same yellow taxi passes by him again on the same city street. The lady wearing the red...
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- 221 reads
The Rules
My son has rules for bedtime. I thought he made them up— the way children do. Games that only make sense to them. But he was serious. So serious it...
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- 639 reads
While I Wasn't Listening
In the hush after a ping, the breath between notifications, the half-second before refresh— nothing at all. I remember quiet. I remember reaching for...
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- 1533 reads
The Sweetest Thing
There is a cup I keep filling. Each morning I fill it. Each morning it is empty and warm. I have learned to love the weight leaving my hands...
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- 349 reads
Price Less
In the Roman tradition, land was measured by the iugerum - the amount one yoke of oxen could plow in a day. The measurement contained the animal. The...
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- 363 reads
Recipe for My Daughter
You'll need the morning I found out - not the fact but the faucet still running, the water hitting the steel basin in that particular pitch that...
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- 1223 reads
A Language So Old
These hands have been fists all day. Clenched around the pallet jack, the edge of a box that weighed what a small child weighs, and then another, and...
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- 780 reads
s13ep study
The suburb was a dead giveaway— too many people, too few people, elm trees, a jack-o-lantern on a porch with its mouth caved in. A street that exists...
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- 350 reads
Transcript
Voicemail received 3:47 PM, November 19 [0:00] Hey, it's me. [0:02] I know you're probably in a meeting. [0:05] I just wanted to— [pause] I don't...
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- 853 reads
Early
It started in November. 5:15, then 5:00. His body dragged him from the sheets as though a debt had just come due. He made the coffee. Drove to work...
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- 261 reads
Since April
The mockingbird on the gutter has been running through his list since before the sun came up. He does not stop for traffic. He does not stop for me...
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- 480 reads
Stay
The dog came back without the boy. She came up the road we never take. The fence-line dogs did not bark for her. They have always known her. Her...
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- 767 reads
The Lot
The shift ended at seven and the bay door came down behind me unhurried, like nothing was waiting on the other side. I sat in the truck. The radio...
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- 267 reads
Both Eyes Open
The rule lived at the end of the hall. Not the stove, and not the dog that bit the Harmon boy. The glass. You do not look in the glass. He said all...
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- 228 reads
:::plots
They built it in polished light. Marble without residue. Doors that closed cleanly. His desk faced intake. A girl becomes a coordinate. He writes it...
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- 239 reads
The First Letter
Early one morning the small green lights went out. No thunder in it: only the hush a house makes when the furnace quits. They lifted their phones...
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- 73 reads