Holly Day
(A)
Sometimes when you’re too rough I’m afraid
you’re trying to kill me, but then I don’t know
if I mind. I don’t know how I want to die, which specific way
I would pick if offered a selection of possible calamities
but I suspect
that if being suffocated against your chest
as you crested, oblivious to my flailing fists
my squeals of indignation
my inevitable silence, the suspicious stillness
was one of the choices on that hypothetical list
it would probably be up there in my top ten choices.
Uptown
The newspaper makes me angry and I prepare myself
for a day of punching Nazis. I read about the local museum
being infiltrated by white supremacists and so I plan my day
around a visit uptown. My daughter asks me where we’re going and I tell her
we’re going to fuck some shit up.
I keep my eyes peeled for guys with shaved heads and swastika pins
combat boots and iron crosses but I don’t see any. Someone says
something kind of racist on the bus next to me and I look at them
but then they shut up as if they know what’s in my head.
The New Apartment
The tiny lizard runs up the wall, disappears into a dark corner
driven in by the rain. I contemplate getting up
find the lizard and putting it back outside
but decide to be charitable, let it stay inside.
Weeks later, I find its desiccated corpse
curled into a fetal knot behind the moving boxes
trapped, perhaps, by the cat, or dead from the heat.
I pick it up by its brittle tail and toss it outside
wonder why so many of my kind acts
end in tragedy.
Holly Day’s poetry has recently appeared in Plainsongs, The Long Islander, and The Nashwaak Review. Her newest poetry collections are In This Place, She Is Her Own (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press), A Wall to Protect Your Eyes (Pski’s Porch Publishing), Folios of Dried Flowers and Pressed Birds (Cyberwit.net), Where We Went Wrong (Clare Songbirds Publishing), Into the Cracks (Golden Antelope Press), and Cross Referencing a Book of Summer (Silver Bow Publishing).
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(A)
Sometimes when you’re too rough I’m afraid
you’re trying to kill me, but then I don’t know
if I mind. I don’t know how I want to die, which specific way
I would pick if offered a selection of possible calamities
but I suspect
that if being suffocated against your chest
as you crested, oblivious to my flailing fists
my squeals of indignation
my inevitable silence, the suspicious stillness
was one of the choices on that hypothetical list
it would probably be up there in my top ten choices.
Uptown
The newspaper makes me angry and I prepare myself
for a day of punching Nazis. I read about the local museum
being infiltrated by white supremacists and so I plan my day
around a visit uptown. My daughter asks me where we’re going and I tell her
we’re going to fuck some shit up.
I keep my eyes peeled for guys with shaved heads and swastika pins
combat boots and iron crosses but I don’t see any. Someone says
something kind of racist on the bus next to me and I look at them
but then they shut up as if they know what’s in my head.
The New Apartment
The tiny lizard runs up the wall, disappears into a dark corner
driven in by the rain. I contemplate getting up
find the lizard and putting it back outside
but decide to be charitable, let it stay inside.
Weeks later, I find its desiccated corpse
curled into a fetal knot behind the moving boxes
trapped, perhaps, by the cat, or dead from the heat.
I pick it up by its brittle tail and toss it outside
wonder why so many of my kind acts
end in tragedy.
Holly Day’s poetry has recently appeared in Plainsongs, The Long Islander, and The Nashwaak Review. Her newest poetry collections are In This Place, She Is Her Own (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press), A Wall to Protect Your Eyes (Pski’s Porch Publishing), Folios of Dried Flowers and Pressed Birds (Cyberwit.net), Where We Went Wrong (Clare Songbirds Publishing), Into the Cracks (Golden Antelope Press), and Cross Referencing a Book of Summer (Silver Bow Publishing).