Ovation from Issue 83
He stood on his stoop
and clapped her sneakers together
hard, a sharp report,
smacking right sole against left,
trying to shock the mud
from each overcomplicated tread,
spanking those expensive footprints
until clay flakes and plugs
ticked onto the boxwood’s leaves
like a light filthy sleet
from the rubber craters and crannies
where they stuck weeks ago,
until her shoes were banged clean
though that didn’t stop
his stiff-armed slow-motion applause
with her feet’s emptied gloves,
slapping mate against mate
without missing a beat,
half-wishing that hollow sound
echoing off their neighbors’ houses
could call her back.
The Turtle from Issue 83
She swerved, barely missing
the dusk-colored turtle crossing the dusk-colored road:
stopping the car, she meant
to walk back and pick it up (hissing, maybe, withdrawing
or extending scaly head and feet)
then carry it to the grassy shoulder or just into the forest,
but suddenly a big pick-up
approached and sped past, never slowing down or swerving,
and the sound she heard
with her whole body as radial flattened shell—a ripe pop,
a crisp, moist detonation
startling as a pin-pricked balloon or a discharged handgun
though less hollow, meatier,
more like overhearing a heart attack from inside the ribcage
and then nothing, the silence
of the newly dead—made her sick out the still-open door,
head lowered nearly to asphalt,
uncrushed brain safe for now inside its own flimsy armor.
