She looked up from her black-bean soup & saw John in his New England mask. Q was in the hallway: three years old, banging on a pot with a wooden spoon, then thirty-nine, drooped in a yellow chair in the living room. She didn’t respond when Joan called her name. Had the gods witnessed Joan toasting her own success? Had she lapsed into braggadocio with her unbridled chorus? Dresses lay in ragged strips on the rug John brought home from Istanbul. Scissors in her left hand, she couldn’t recall picking them up. All her life, she had nibbled on love, savoring small bites as if it were a delicacy served during wartime. Joan turned to repeat herself, but John & Q were gone. Absence was a hard poem to read. She felt a raw hunger poised in her belly, it snuck into her throat. She considered roaring, releasing a growl that would shake the building. But she had lugged her hunger this far, she could carry it a bit further.
John Amen is the author of six collections of poetry, including Illusion of an Overwhelm, finalist for the 2018 Brockman-Campbell Award, and work from which was chosen as a finalist for the 2018 Dana Award. He was the recipient of the 2021 Jack Grapes Poetry Prize and the 2024 Susan Laughter Myers Fellowship. His poems and prose have appeared recently in Rattle, Prairie Schooner, Poetry Daily, and DMQ Review. He founded and was managing editor of Pedestal Magazine (2000-2025). His latest collection, Dark Souvenirs, was released by NYQ Books in 2024.