THE DOG OF THE THROAT
Dear throat:
Given every living thing,
given the farmer’s
and butcher’s slaughter
—in you are the hog’s hearts,
the stalks, and the milk,
and the grain of the wind,
the grain heard, the flock herded,
the swallow, the holler—
what, throat, at your age,
given every sing
—and you cough and collapse
and hack clear a way
back through for so little
a cry as the flies make—
whose moan’s still born?
Mark Bilbrey drags around degrees from the University of
Tennessee-Chattanooga, The University of Iowa, and The University of
Georgia. He recently taught Composition, American Poetry, Poetry
Writing, and Bible as Literature at the University of
Wisconsin-Parkside, but presently works for the Admissions office at
Claremont McKenna College. Poems from the manuscript he's currently finishing have been published in Versal, ACTION YES, 42 Opus, LIT, Ghost House, and Straylight. He lives in Claremont, California.
Sunday, April 21, 2013
Sunday, April 07, 2013
Annie Won
a man is playing the moonlight sonata on the piano
there isn't really moonlight. the man has a grey
crayon and has drawn it all over the canvas
everything muddy. you can't really see anything because
it's dark. moonlight is pretty dim.
several years pass. the man continues until the entire canvas is
uniform grey. then he begins to cry. it is so sad,
he says. the brine beads off the cloth.
he has used an entire box of kleenex.
his crayon is a stub glued to the bottom of his hand.
this is my greatest masterpiece, he says.
Annie Won is a poet chemist aspiringyogi who lives in Cambridge, MA. She is a Kundiman Fellow and a Juniper Summer Writing Institute scholarship recipient, and has previously published in Shampoo Magazine.
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