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When He
by Remi Recchia

July 13, 2020 Contributed By: Remi Recchia

 

When he takes the other woman to bed, does he

think of his wife? Her goodness trailing soot, eyes

 

ringed and fringed in black? She stays up all night,

clips coupons from old letters, unlicks the envelopes.

 

They are weathered and damp. A waste of postage.

Shoes untie themselves in his absence. Ring thaws.

 

The press is unkind. She is too gracious or too cruel,

a social-widow whose children study economics.

 

Where does the cow low, sudden?

 

A blackbird shell scrapes the sky. Her husband’s bomb-

threat comes true for a moment, a yellow eye in storm.

 

Newspapers unfurl themselves like chickens hatching

backward. He keeps the other woman warm each night.

 

His wife hires a plumber and an electrician, builds

two moats. She will do anything out of necessity.

 

Family dog guards the door early, falls asleep on the job.

Her husband calls three times, hangs up four more.

 

 

Filed Under: Poetry Posted On: July 13, 2020

Further Reading

CLOUD CULT interviewed by Raul Clement:TEN QUESTIONS

Interviewer’s note: the following interview is the first in a series I will conduct with various indie rock bands of political, artistic, and literary merit. “Ten Questions” will be the series title, as I hope to keep these interviews suitably brief for an online format. Based out of Minneapolis, Cloud Cult formed in 1995 as the […]

Shedding
by C. Kubasta

He could imagine the way the metal-hitting-wood would echo through the darkened rooms in the middle of the night, bouncing off the worn wooden floors from downstairs to upstairs, her body tensing in the bed beside him.

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by Chandra Livia Candiani
Translated from the Italian by Elisabetta Taboga and Roy Duffield

Look mum it’s Ai
the number that escaped
the last of your sums, the figure
that doesn’t add up.

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