for hb
I do not. Snow piles up outside the kitchen window. Feta cheese.
Cucumber, sliced thinly. Olive oil. Pita. Get on a plane. Visit me. From
France, Italy, New Mexico. A lover warned me once to be more patient. I
emailed my doctor this morning. My left ankle swells at night. Doesn’t
throb though. Ibuprofen. Some water. Lukewarm. I might have married
once if not for bells and cellos and leashes. And affairs. There’s something
lost in the transcription of beauty. Trust. Champagne. The average person
shrugs forty times a day. Let’s travel. Everything turns up straw. How
much I want you. How much a boat. How much a box, a mouth. A tongue-
tied jester. How much I eat when I close my eyes. How much you are gone
now and I’m not. How much bread I really need. A blue pillow where I rest
my head. At night. And in the morning I think how I’ll sell my blood to pay
the rent, how I’ll pull my hair and trade it to the wind.
Editor’s Feature in TQ1: An Interview with Gary McDowell by TJ Jarrett
Gary L. McDowell is the author of Weeping at a Stranger’s Funeral (Dream Horse Press, forthcoming) and American Amen (Dream Horse Press, 2010) and is the co-editor of The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Prose Poetry (Rose Metal Press, 2010). He lives in Nashville, TN.