• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

MAYDAY

  • Culture
  • Interviews
  • Reviews
  • Nonfiction
    • Contests
  • Translation
  • Fiction
  • Poetry
  • About
    • Submit
      • Contests
      • Contest Winners
      • MAYDAY:Black
    • Open Positions
    • Masthead
    • Contributors

Underworld
by Dana Curtis

December 3, 2020 Contributed By: Dana Curtis

This poem was nominated for The Best of the Net.

Underworld
Courtesy of Mervyn Jones

It was done in an hour, and

the aftermath was a red light sinking

behind a line of bodies, nothing like

a bread line or staying up all night

to get the best seats. My cut was

waiting in a box by the door while a man stood

outside my window looking at the house

next door. The world was efficient

just as it always had been: I was meant to be

alone. All of the trees knelt down

and untied the vines. Some things only taste good

when they’re stolen. I will always give up

the codes and locations, memories

and fog hidden buildings: they’re all wound up

like my mood – no one will sleep

tonight. It’s one more instance of waiting

to be taken, waiting for the crime,

a marble bird on the tabletop,

a gun safe, a merry-go-round, antique radio.

I listen to the same song but never

really understand. I wore

a necklace of onyx beads and when

the sun came up, I left

the day in a jar.


DANA CURTIS’ third full-length collection of poetry, Wave Particle Duality, was recently published by blazeVOX Books. Her second collection, i, was published by CW Books, and her first book, The Body’s Response to Famine, won the Pavement Saw Press Transcontinental Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in such publications as Hotel Amerika, Indiana Review, Colorado Review, and Prairie Schooner. She has received grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board and the McKnight Foundation. She is the Editor-in-Chief of Elixir Press and lives in Denver Colorado. 

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Poetry Posted On: December 3, 2020

Further Reading

Interlopers
by Carolyn Oliver

Early sun nestled under trees and eaves that cupped our voices counting up past ten and naming creatures—shrews, dolphins, bats, whales— who’d catch the news of our passing through fog, or night, or krill clouds in the deep. Mothers, I told you, echolocate too. For months I’d hummed and heard you in my dark, held […]

The Overture
by J.D. Isip

Straight Guy tells me, “Gay men have it so easy – It’s all just fucking and see you later, pal Am I right?” And I’m of the Larry Kramer school of, “Yeah that’s about right” (and God knows some fag is calling the ACLU right now) He buys us more beer, “I mean, none of this […]

Twasday
by Jillian Weise

The first time I slipped between Tuesday and Wednesday, into a Twasday, I saw Amy. She was wearing her tattoos again. I had not seen her in years. She asked me to help her build a casket. She had the hammer and nails. The saw was lying on the ground next to a plank of […]

Primary Sidebar

Recently Published

  • Inside the Kaleidoscope
    by Jane O. Wayne
  • Two Poems by Luis Alberto de Cuenca
    translated from the Spanish by Gustavo Pérez Firmat
  • I Hope Your Birthday Is So Beautiful, It Hurts to Look at It
    by Josette Akresh-Gonzales
  • Concerning My Daughter by Kim Hye-jin
    translated from the Korean by Jamie Chang,
    reviewed by Jacqueline Schaalje
  • Verge
    by William Cordeiro

Trending

  • Eight Contemporary Female Irish Artists to Fall In Love With Immediately
    by Aya Kusch
  • Sellouts 1970: Love Story: The Year a Screenplay-Turned-Novel Almost Broke the National Book Award
    by Kirk Sever
  • George Saunders on A Swim in a Pond in the Rain
    by Brianna Di Monda
  • Cool Uncle
    by Emmett Knowlton
  • I Hope Your Birthday Is So Beautiful, It Hurts to Look at It
    by Josette Akresh-Gonzales
  • I Know Who Orville Peck Is
    by Robin Gow
  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Footer

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter

Business


Reprint Rights
Privacy Policy
Archive

Engage


Open Positions
Donate
Contact Us

Copyright © 2023 · New American Press

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.