10/4/2017 Poetry By Annmarie LockhartAlanon I dreamed of frozen coffee and the way a life can fit inside a shoebox at its beginning and its end. I dreamed of foreign tongues touched to icy straws and the sad space between what might have been and what is. I dreamed of Midwestern food passing weakly for Italian and the tails of alligators swimming in rivers of beer. I dreamed I wouldn't wake to your hardened hearing and the spider-veined face to match your cirrhotic liver. I dreamed I would one day sleep again. At 50, Revisiting One’s Attempted Rape at 18
Side Show A human soul is not to be trifled with. It may inhabit the body of a Chinaman, a Turk, an Arab, or a Hottentot--it is still an immortal spirit!—PT Barnum Disfigured shadows take the tickets and hawk cotton candy, popcorn, sno-cones, try-your-luck games, and the main event, the freak show. Step right up! Come and see would it be considered slander, libel, or fantasy if I named him here? the champ, the wrestler, the big man crazed from cutting weight, high and pumped and armed with an athletic scholarship and a blade. His words, blurry and close: I’ve fucked uglier girls than you as the big top topples. today: a home repair business and a petty arrest record, a $408 fine for obstruction of justice The champ was just a chump seedy, seamy, and low rent like the rest of the circus whose ticket prices are way too high and will never be refunded. Forget-me-not the fireworks lit up the backstory, the landscape, a game of skill, the moon was afraid, peering over the hills with meticulous concern for the frame of the night, the hinge upon which he cycled, as did she, stuck in her struggle to free herself from locked combat, slowly drawing her fingers over the permanent tooth marks, across the arch of her foot, her bandages taped to soak up the fluids she lost, the poisons that accumulated after the last night he’d showed her again how much he loved her ![]() Bio: Annmarie Lockhart is the founding editor of vox poetica, an online literary salon dedicated to poetry, and Unbound Content, an independent poetry press. A lifelong resident of Englewood, New Jersey, she lives, writes, and works two miles from the hospital where she was born. You can read her words at fine journals online and in print. 8/20/2018 06:24:07 am
I turned my iPad on, before I had my first cups; and your name flashed across the screen. I couldn’t take my eyes away. I felt your fear, anguish and heartbreak. God, I wanted to destroy him. I hope your revealing made a difference in your sweet soul. Comments are closed.
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