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Two Poems by Misty Harper The Difference Between Often the queen's swollen body Can weigh more than a regular pencil. The Queen in public is not supposed to Leave through the door she came in through. A road is a road and a street Is a road that's walked along? The hand-drawn roadside sign Hung in front of a small stand Assured us that FIRE WORKS. A single gap changes things. Missing tooth, missing hubcap. And of course a death any death. A breach like an empty seat And the woman beside it keeps Checking her watch and looking back, Up the aisle, up both aisles. Her look Is of the self distrusting its hoping. Even so it pokes its head through. Visibly digesting expectation As a snake will a mouse. Alone Alone won't stop playing piggyback. Alone pretends to be someone named Leona. Alone is lo and behold, un-beheld. Alone will be heading to its beheading alone. The self’s shelves of rib and shore, itch and spore, waddle forth, two people trying to parade as one horse. The hours knock about inside them. They cannot move like a horse. Alone is baloney, is a loan, a mortgage whose root that means dead won’t hide. Dead pledge. Alone will hem, and haw, and hedge at itself, a balcony loitering after the building is long-gone. ["Alone" was first published in Konundrum Engine Literary Review] |
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