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A RELATIONSHIP, FOR INSTANCE by Emily M. Green

July 1, 2011 Contributed By: Emily M. Green

No one you know, but let’s say a woman, pretty. Not beautiful.
Her man, also not bad looking, though his age is starting to show.
At one time, she remembered to pick him up a sandwich for lunch
and he would start her bath when she was on her way home. But at the end,
you know, the end, he remembered to pinch her stomach after she overate
and she would taunt him about how he cheated on his ex-girlfriend
(with whom he was still in love) with a hooker. This was only the first trick:
the real way to hurt each other had nothing to do with the other.
The second trick? Love did not stay. Sorrow did not leave.
And the dog, as always, took the real hurt, left
in the neighbor’s care
indefinitely.

 

Return to table of contents for Issue 4 Summer 2011

Filed Under: Poetry Posted On: July 1, 2011

Further Reading

UNTITLED by Robert MacCready

Return to table of contents for Issue 3 Fall 2010

Landfill by Sergio Ballouk
(Translated from Portuguese by Julian Cola)

Behold, everybody focus your attention from the truck’s shadow hauling pallets behold the old landfill (extinct for so many years) resurges so does the ravine it resurges lake tin reed an old sieve hawk… people spanning the depths of luck they all resurge I hear brats shouting in high pursuit of the sweet truck the […]

2 Poems
by Miguel Avero, translated from the Spanish by Jona Colson

Exemplary You glimpse a slight copy of liquid belly. Talk about the wind, breed waves on each page, breeding breezes on their veneers. You examine that other in the water-logged bookshelf. Give a meticulous detail of tears opting down very tense cheeks. But this one you pose in your hands (leaves fall apart like butterflies […]

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