Meadow
 
In the dew-drenched dappled meadow of bad poetry we lay down and kissed the day away. Drunk on wine, we rolled over each other, covering ourselves in pollen until our eyes were red and weeping, our skin sore and itchy. The sky smiled upon our pale pigmentation and the sunlight bestowed double-vision as we rolled down the hillside crushing flowers we were too naive to call weeds, across the paint factory’s soybean fields, down through the haunted olive orchards where widowed mothers once tried to marry off their daughters, over stubble stabbing our backs and down to the river slick with gasoline, rolling over each other and into the city, kissing the day away, down streets where traffic dissolved into clouds of starlings whose flight described poems no one could translate. Still we kept kissing in the twilight of skyscrapers, nothing breaking our embrace, not the weather, the news, five-star reviews, the tents of the homeless, the line-ups at the food bank, the limos double-parked by the courthouse, as we crashed through crosswalks, rolling over empties no one recycled, rain blurring our sight, the afternoon digging its shadows into our folds, scarring us with darkness until night blossomed in our eyes, and still we kept kissing, mouths empty and dry, afraid if we stopped of what we might say.
 
**
 
The Undertaking

The undertaking was daunting. The thought of it gave us pause, an awkward pause filled with nervous coughing. The patter of bedtime stories assuaged some of our fears. Other fears stayed awake listening to rain on the roof. Murmured misgivings gave way to concerted effort. We wore our failures proudly, displaying our wounds at family gatherings. “Button up your shirt,” clucked Mother, her disapproval thinly masking her admiration. Excusing ourselves when no one was paying attention, we paid ourselves in currency plummeting earthward. Our knees, still bleeding from years of crawling, clicked with each faltering step. Upright postures became less so as we leaned into our own bitterness. Frost coated our patchy fur. We fumbled in the dark, searching for lost keys, progressive eyeglasses, outcomes that eluded us.
 
**
 
Symphony
 
It smells like the summer the symphony got cancelled. Workers carrying black instrument cases lining the stairs leading to the back door. Me telling our disgruntled neighbour it’s nothing to worry about, not a break-in, and she pretending not to hear. The kitchen filling with woodwinds prepping food. Sauce smeared everywhere like a crime scene. String players huddling around the living room stereo waiting for the needle to drop. Muted brass speaking in hushed undertones, keeping their distance from what once mattered, spotting threats tucked in the corners of eyes. Percussionists’ abandoned cars parked in makeshift sanctuaries, horns silently seeking shelter. Alarms lodged in the throat like fish bones. Traffic swarming upstream to spawn in what’s left of the river’s source. Composers, coming down from the tree-line, transcribing the sound of foothills on fire. Notes difficult to sustain erased from the score.
 
**

Convictions

An intentional community springs up in the desert and pollutes all remaining groundwater. Convictions held tightly to chests are overturned by years of hard work and folders of indisputable stats; graphs rising precipitously like adolescent mountain ranges, algorithms abandoning the numerical in search of the Arabic source of their name. Predictions blown off-course by rogue currents prove fruitless as pollinators succumb. Ideals plunge earthward, are recovered, reassembled and enshrined.

**

Compose
 
You seem very composed. And by that I don’t mean the sharps and flats in your body of work. Why not body of play? Maybe it’s the way your days, or at least Monday-Friday, stretch out like the five parallel power lines in the alley behind the house; an avian musical staff dotted with quarter-note crows, half-note gulls, eighth-note birds too small to identify sans binocs, their coming and going a feathery tune rewritten on the fly. But you’re not musical. Maybe it’s the indented paragraphs in your conversation, or the thoughts you’ve submitted to an editor you’ve never met prior to publication in The Tip of the Tongue. I really enjoyed your piece in The Teeth and The Lips, by the way. No, I was wrong, you are musical. It’s like there’s a little deaf Beethoven wandering around in your cortex who has to be tapped on the shoulder and turned around so he can see the audience applauding. Of course, with the word composed comes its double, decomposed, trailing behind like a cadaverous shadow devouring flesh and welcoming worms; holes torn in the paper by countless erasures, letters worn off the delete button, a hundred aborted melodies circling the air like unborn souls.

**

The Dramaturge and the Cougar
 
The irony of a job title that shares etymology with the word “turgid” was not lost on her as she walked home. Alone. At night. In the woods.  She clutched a bundle of manuscripts — fresh dreams waiting to be crushed — tightly against her breast.  Somewhere near here a cougar killed and ate a deer last year. She was not a ruminant, but would a hungry predator draw such fine distinctions? And if the cougar had good manners, wore a rented tux, dined while listening to Puccini, wouldn’t these plays make handsome napkins with which to dab the blood from its paws. “Pardon me,” he said as he dropped from a tree branch and landed suddenly in front of her. “Does this path go to town?” For such a large animal he spoke very softly. She nodded once, trying to look casual, hoping the beating of her heart did not trigger some primitive instinct in her questioner. “Thank you,” he replied and disappeared in the darkness, like the draft of a play one gets rid of after admitting, finally, that it is going nowhere.

**
 
Slogans

The slogans lay scattered on the pavement, an exploded checkerboard of placards. The punchy words scrawled with Sharpies have been committed to memory and put to music, accompanied by bagpipes fashioned from bladders of the fallen. Disembodied voices, perching next to pigeons on windowsills, timidly join the celebratory shouts before turning down side-streets where they fade and die in the mournful hum of air conditioners. Echos reverberate where scuffles interrupt the progress of shuffling feet. The crowd, a sluggish river moving slowly through the city, picks up onlookers like houses in a flood. The angriest surge forward seeking solutions buried under makeshift dams of sandbags. As arms grow tired, the last remaining signs fall to earth. Years later, the day’s slogans, rebranded and marketed by corporate interests, stream into the world unimpeded.

**
 
Meat

This is it without the packaging or presentation, plastic and styrofoam removed and escorted from the building by security, stripped of makeup, no more concealer, glances skinned of all history, social cues rendered harmless, stranded filaments knotted, loose threads braided, stray hair clipped, surface details erased, tender parts exposed to air, chemicals that rushed in to repair torn muscles drained away, cleaning complete, seasoning begun, salted with desire, peppered with questions.  You’re standing in the slippery mess of what’s been discarded, close to the heart of it, only to find it’s eloped with your hunger. Once a year you get a postcard from some exotic place and try to digest what’s written on the back but the words wish you were here have been smeared in transit, leaving you yearning for more, your new diet a failure.
 
**

Looting

Apologies, sir, I am a Viking and know no better. The TV in the window of the neighbourhood electronics store was just asking for it. Snakes eat eggs from the nest, one work of art from your museum could feed thousands, some people work so hard they can’t think when the day is done, let alone form intricate sentences, so who are you to pass sentence from the safety of your private collection? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not here to spray-paint profanities, redistribute wealth, or proclaim that right and wrong are relative terms. The truth is I’m not a Viking, that was a lie, I have passed myself off as one for many years, wracked with shame as I plundered coastline villages. I am, genetically-speaking, a pirate. A whole bank of television sets just sitting there, all tuned to the same nature channel. A weasel making off with its prey. When the window broke it was exhilarating. And then I acted instinctively, like a primate beating in the skull of an old friend who’d joined a neighbouring tribe. The primate might feel sad after the fact but with no words to express their emotions no apology is forthcoming. I, however, am very sorry. Which is not to say I wouldn’t do it again. I am not, however, a pirate. That too was a lie. I get seasick easily.

**

Escape of the Prose Poem

Who can justify these borders? Smuggling blocks of text past the guards, leaving the rhymed life behind. Iambic pentameter of the heart giving way to troubling fibrillation. Climbing the chainlink fence, shirt torn on barbed wire, jumping down, spraining an ankle. Limping da-dum da-dum through underbrush, bricks of crushed words weighing down pockets, rhetorical tools rendered useless by rust. Wondering why we traded the groomed courtyard’s clean grid for this pockmarked landscape. Potholes filled with rainwater. Careful schemes upended in the failing light, going in circles, bleeding but unbroken…

**

​Peter Anderson is a poet, performer and playwright living in Vancouver on the unceded territory of the Coast Salish peoples. He was a finalist in the 2023 Raven Poetry Chapbook contest and his work has appeared in Unbroken, Sublunary Review, Frigg, SORTES, duality, Best Microfictions 2022, and elsewhere. His plays are available at Canadian Play Outlet.

A Poem Is a Little Church, Remember?
 
Where peach trees flourish year-round, heavy with fruit.  Where bluebirds perch in the branches, then swoop down to eat from our hands.  Where the barn owl’s eyes are yellow as flame and do not flicker, but the river flickers alive because we’ve put peaches, those tender jewels, inside it, and the current carries them away.  We don’t name the river, whose banks glisten with dragonflies that emerge from the water, then practice opening and closing their glassy wings.  In the little church, a door opens.  The door is red, the door is wood, the door is wrought iron and we have the skeleton key.  It opens onto a courtyard with a fountain that sounds like the river, tamed, whose only business is wishes.  What’s better than a held breath, a tossed coin?  A pocket, freshly mended, or a crop of lost pennies scattered on the path, their coppery, ridged faces reflecting the sun.

**
 
This poem is from the author's book, Paper Sky (Press 53, 2024.)

**

Cloud Report, 1/18/23
 
Now the angels are in my kitchen, whipping cream in big silver bowls.  I am tired of being afraid.  When they look at the sky, an airplane slowly disappears into sweet white chiffon, bare wet trees stark against it.  I didn’t invite them, but like clouds, a few arrived anyway.  They gaze over my shoulder toward the horizon when I ask, What happens now?  They offer me a soft chair with the best view and a cup of hot chocolate, but the clouds form a wall as far as I can see.  So the angels curl on the couch, then tuck their robes around their knees.  Clearly, they have time.
 
**
 
This poem first appeared in Cloud Reports (Celery City Chapbooks, 2024) and was reprinted in Paper Sky (Press 53, 2024.)

**

​Still
 
Two layers of clouds sheer as bridal veils glide fast in opposite directions, edges blurred, swirling me in white and blue, even though I’m below all that motion, sitting still.  Remind me, was there still snow on the ground when the world stopped, churches and bars and schools closed, everything canceled?  Was there wind?  Each day stretched three times its usual size.  In our house, no one sang, though many nights we played euchre at the kitchen table.  Once, the lights flickered out.  The next morning, the well pump quit.  Our house became an island, shuttered tight against the news.  But it still leaked in.  Night and day behaved themselves, at least, and lined up to walk on sock feet down the hall.  From time to time I sat in the attic, wrapped in blankets, and watched the aspen’s branches scrape the gray horizon.  We fed our worry to the bluebirds which nested just inside our yard.  Our supply was abundant.  The young birds grew strong and practiced flying among the branches, then perched next to each other, briefly, three on one branch, two on another, like bright scraps of sky.  
 
**

This poem first appeared in Dreaming Awake:  New Contemporary Prose Poetry from the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom, and was  reprinted in Paper Sky (Press 53, 2024.)

**
 
Aubade with Selfies
 
I’m waiting for the swirling snow to stop and finally reveal the horizon.  Right this minute, I’m caught in a cloud:  I can’t see the field beyond the trees and if I could, it would also be white.  My niece has just landed in Paris, and sits in a silver chair in front of a gilt-framed mirror, sipping coffee.  Her updates find me almost instantly, here in the midst of the snow.  Now I can’t even see the trees.

**

This poem first appeared in On the Seawall and was reprinted in Paper Sky (Press 53, 2024.)

**
 
Junior Year Abroad
 
I intended to live one significant moment after another, beginning with that tiny bottle of Dior cologne in the cramped bathroom of my Air France flight.  This was the before.  Before the man next to me sighed and scribbled apologies to his beloved all night long.  Before I rode the train carrying a bouquet of violets.  Before I sat in cemeteries at noon, chewing my baguette.  Before the lost passport, the bad haircut, the tripped fuse that knocked out power to a whole apartment building.  Before my teacher burst into our classroom, clutching the novel she assigned, and pointed at me.  Of course I confused key points:  Did the piano really mix cocktails each time it was played?  Did the young woman grow a water lily in her lung?  Yes, she was tragically beautiful, red-haired and pale.  Yes, the owner of that wondrous piano briefly married her.  But understanding the book was like trying to touch a whitecap on an ocean wave as it washed back out to sea.  Even now, I still hope to stumble across the definitive English translation.
 
**
 
This first appeared in New Flash Fiction Review and was reprinted in Paper Sky (Press 53, 2024.)

**

Inside Out
 
The girl turns the house inside out.  Does it matter what she’s looking for?  She turns herself inside out.  She turns the lake and the sky and the clouds inside out.  Inside out, they are not much different.  But the girl is tireless.  She has only one assistant, a loyal dog the colour of flame, and so much ground to cover.  Behind her eyes, two swans drift among the lily pads, dripping with rain.  Two more join them, then two more.  She blinks away their slick feathers and black bills full of seaweed, then turns toward the constellations and the moon, which grows thinner every day.  What difference will it make if she turns those things inside out?  Dark is dark.  And she is caught in its throat.

** 

This poem first appeared in MacQueen’s Quinterly and was reprinted in Paper Sky (Press 53, 2024.)

**

Eight to Ten Inches by Nightfall
 
My daughter built a woman from snow on our front step, then added a red apron and a witch’s stringy wig.  It is anatomically correct.  Now I am surprised by unexpected company when I glimpse it, chalky and gleaming, through the window.  But no one’s really there.  No one’s coming, either, though we’ve shoveled a path to the garage.  We’ve sent our little griefs to sleep under the maple, and a gust has erased their tracks.  Near the feeder, a wild turkey flaps to clear the drift that has built itself, hour by hour, tall as a girl.  The field and sky are white mirrors that make us dizzy, twins who aren’t at all lonely for the touch of a hand or wing.
 
**
 
This first appeared in Poetry East and was reprinted in Paper Sky (Press 53, 2024.)

 **
 
Pandemic Ode
 
Oh gray horizon, gather me up.  I am tired of learning to walk nicely on a leash.  Soon the day will snatch me in its jaws—I never know exactly when.  Its teeth are white and sharp as stars.  I’d be your pet in exchange for the kind of sleep that doesn’t strand me on my knees in a warehouse full of wedding dresses, searching for sequins and needles and lace. I’m happy to drink from puddles on the street.  Happy to fetch sticks, or not, and drop them at your feet.  Oh cloudless sky, gather me up and let me stay awhile, say you’ll keep me safe.  Safe from that breeze across my sweaty neck.  Safe from that other self, snapping and growling inside her cage of bones.
 
**

This first appeared in Prairie Schooner and was reprinted in Paper Sky (Press 53, 2024.)
 
**

​​Kathleen McGookey has published five books and four chapbooks of prose poems, most recently Paper Sky (Press 53) and Cloud Reports (Celery City Chapbooks).  Her work has appeared in journals including Copper Nickel, December, Epoch, Field, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, On the Seawall, Poetry East, Prairie Schooner, Ploughshares, The Southern Review, and Tupelo Quarterly, as well as in the anthologies Best Microfiction, Best Small Fictions, and New Micro:  Exceptionally Small Fiction.  She lives in Middleville, Michigan, with her family.  Depending on the season, she waterskis, downhill skis, walks, and bakes pies.