Arsenic Lobster poetry journal        Issue Six   2004
| Home | Issue Six | Contents | Contributors | Archive | Submission | About Us | Contact Us |
 
You have come to see loss as the future tense of love
Nancy A Henry

If she writes this poem
something might happen
that she can’t control.
It’s a poem about
catching hell,
catching fire,
catching craziness from the woman
down the hall who chants the name
of every stair.

Here she is swollen with his love
like a fat pink rose; here she is
in his bed with a chewed pencil
getting ready to write this poem.

It’s a poem about notes
she picks off greasy asphalt
and undoes on the corkboard in her room;
about those receipts for desperate things:
silk roses, vodka, pregnancy test kits.
It’s a poem about getting too creative
at the makeup counter,
getting up to no good
and staying there awhile.

She might get arrested if she writes this poem,
might lose her reputation, her eternal salvation,
what’s left of her feverish mind.
She might lose him if she writes this poem…

Reason enough
to lay that first word down.

About Nancy A Henry

| Home | Issue Six | Contents | Contributors | Archive | Submission | About Us | Contact Us |