Tag: American sentences

Preservationist by Edie Meade

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Preservationist [American sonnet in American sentences]
for WD
what do you call a man, old, unmarried and outliving his children?
do you call him, do you let him send your children his old belongings?
I know he doesn’t want anyone to feel sorry for him, it’s just
he lives alone there, no heirs, with a library of biology
guides to spiders, venomous snakes of Tennessee, wildlife of the south
every week they arrive mummified in packing tape and grocery bags
estate sale preemption, keepsakes widowed into the arms of strangers
he sends each book wrapped more tightly than the last, handwriting unraveled
to index card, thumbprint smudge notarized, legacy the task at hand
let the kids lay into it, their excitement breaking safety scissors
this is the natural order of things, this is the future, this is it
I saw him on the news, nearly eighty, snatching a timber rattler
shirtless in the woods, all tendons and lightning and ferocious smile
he said, preserving a habitat means caring for the hard to love
*
Edie Meade is a writer in Petersburg, Virginia. Recently published in Room Magazine, Invisible City, The Harvard Advocate, JMWW, The Normal School, and Litro.
Twitter: @ediemeade
Instagram and Threads: @edie_thee_meade
Website: https://ediemeade.com/

Three Poems by Anne Babson

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POST-FACTUAL-MODERNISM

So much depends
Upon
A red hat about
America
Stitched in China
For Russia
Beside the white
Chickens

*

MADISON AVENUE HAIKU

The Shinto soundbyte
Smacked between bubblegum lips
Is irreligious.

Five beats, seven beats,
Five beats — and why should we think
This is not an ad?

Japanese culture
Owns the rights to bonsai verse.
Coke is it for us.

*

WHERE LOUIS, LESTAT AND I BAR-CRAWL BOURBON STREET

Whatever words say, bodies govern us,
Trapped by flesh, no matter which pretty speech.
But on Bourbon, bouncers don’t card this
Child corpse. They assume I’m auditioning.
I watch women spin on poles, cellulite
Jiggling while they twerk, fat nipples bouncing.
Louis and Lestat slip into the lounge,
But I am not hungry for the buffet.
I stole a wallet off my midnight snack
On Conti. I slip bills in g-strings, not
To satisfy appetites but to watch
Women’s thighs show me stretch marks and track marks
Through bronze spray tan, tattoos, and glitter sweat.

This book freezes me in glitter amber.
My child vampire body will never grow.
That’s not vampire blood. That’s vampire novel.
I ask Britni, the one I panty-stuffed
With twenty singles, to answer questions.
What’s her favorite book? She doesn’t read.
Not reading books traps, too, I see. Britni
Won’t reach fifti, my night vision tells me.
But what is your favorite book? Yes, you there!
And to what has it taught you to submit?

*

Anne Babson is the author of three full-length collections of poetry — The White Trash Pantheon, Polite Occasions, and Messiah. Her fourth collection, The Bunker Book, will be published in 2021 by Unsolicited Press. Her poems have appeared in literary journals on five continents. She lives and writes in New Orleans.