Three Poems
Stock image, edited.
Play Therapy
One begins, so where do you want to begin, then hands me the world
as it has always been: a gift the gods keep shrinking as if we’ll grow
large enough to finally carry it ourselves. One wonders how many
shadows in the dollhouse are invented, suggests I stop reaching
in the dark for anything. My mother leaves me at clinics full of toys
and says, be back in an hour, certain as Rorschach doubting the moth
so clearly in everything I’d learn to feel found. Somewhere in the sand tray
is a plastic treasure chest filled with photo albums no one wants
to look at anymore, pages of us in front of so many houses
hoping this is the right front door. One considers the price of
connection is its inevitable lack as she cradles my chin and kisses me
on the mouth a goodbye I’d seek from every broken goodbye thereafter.
One submits, you know yourself better than anyone, and I remember posing,
saying, “cheese,” my sister’s crayoned blueprint held over her head,
my parents in love with the idea of tomorrow, all its better versions.
We have a dog with teeth that won’t stop going rotten. The dog is mine,
was a present for my birthday. I remember being told to smile.
Pyrrhic
Heaven is the word I teach my son
as he sits in the empty dog bed
watching an astronaut on TV
come untethered. He’s at the age
of insisting—the world has a boss
and it’s him. The forest beyond
the window blackens, irrevocable
as ash, her paw print embossing the urn.
There are enough stars out to awe him
into belief, that each is surrounded
by planets just like ours, little boys
wondering through dark back at him.
There’s my reflection in the colander
helmeting his head, distant as any
answer I might give. For where
she is now. How far from here that is.
Hangover
Woke because of it. My old dog
came to be fed, promptly
circled and slumped
at the foot of the bed.
I swore she died right
then and there. There
was snow in the air. Blue as this
room’s sleep. Each pillow a mirage
awash in it. Tacked to the wall
beside a picture of my grandfather
as a young man is a picture
of my grandfather as an old man.
The day after never left
his face. I once unearthed
a full bottle of Seagram’s
while playing in the woods
and gave it to him for Christmas.
I was so small I could sleep
on the round of his belly.
I have this memory of him
carrying me to bed. How softly
night wanted to dissolve
in one place, to find me
all alone in another.
Samuel Piccone is the author of Domestica (University of Arkansas Press, 2026), winner of the 2025 Miller Williams Prize. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in publications including Frontier Poetry, RHINO, swamp pink, and Washington Square Review. He serves as poetry editor at Raleigh Review, and is an assistant teaching professor at Iowa State University.