by Holly Day

In the Dark

the thud of the dishwasher upstairs
the baby monitor
in my daughter’s room.
I hear something on the back porch
can almost see
hands ready to smash through
the deranged face pressed up against the glass
at night
sometimes
behind my head
way up, listen for monsters
sounds like voices. I
won’t turn around.

****

Summer Love

The places he’d been, with convoluted names
were as exotic as the places he’d lived
men bent spades into birdhouses
I wanted so badly to be with him in Colorado
to stand in the exact spot where four state lines met
and survive it all. He kept saying, Next time, next time, I promise.
I waited by the lake for him to come and get me
visions of Indianapolis burning holes in my brain
but he never came back to get me, never took me away.

****

Five Years Old Is Too Young To See This World

I hear radio reports reporting, television shows broadcasting
school janitors with secret torture chambers
and I wonder how they can ask me

the trusted neighbor caught trafficking child pornography
children bringing weapons to school and I
papal heads arrested for raping boys, daycare providers hiding the dead

underground cannibal cults exposed by undercover agents exposing
drunk driving accidents involving dozens of dead
wonder when it’s safe to send him out the door, and to school.

*******

Holly Day’s poetry has recently appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Grain, and Harvard Review. Her newest poetry collections are Where We Went Wrong (Clare Songbirds Publishing), Into the Cracks (Golden Antelope Press), Cross Referencing a Book of Summer (Silver Bow Publishing), and The Tooth is the Largest Organ in the Human Body (Anaphora Literary Press).

Holly is also one of only three poets featured in our newest print publication, ZEENITH, available now at our POP SHOP.