HOW DO YOU DO?
I’m [sent chain a path, ache wrap, sprouting hats, snicker snack] hanging [lips pressed pleasant bent, sealed mirror pretty paste on bugs and cracks] in [strangled crowd of lone on-ly on oops-a-thought glass and ash, dandy half blown lion head, but no more ragged than] there [you]
RESOLVED:
1. to scratch grooves deep in red clay at each boundary
2. to periscope-stare at the world
3. to describe and classify each threat a. wet flesh b. gale force hilarity c. sun-bite smiles
4. to plan my revenge with garden wolves
5. to take those plans and burn them, swallow the ashes, and flood it all away
COULD HAVE BEEN MAD
They meet, and they crack. It cannot be any other way. Fragile meets brittle, to find sloppy nourishment within a single egg. No way to separate the mess, the glue that secures pigment to panel for centuries or cooks mother to bitter and salt.
Kate Powell Shine’s poetry has appeared in magazines including FuseLit, Gutter Eloquence, Sein und Werden, and Beltway Poetry Quarterly. She lives in Maryland.