Tag: Shadows

Perhaps by Jo Taylor

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Perhaps

        The future is called ‘perhaps,’ which is the only possible thing
        to call the future.
                —Tennessee Williams

I see tomorrow dimly, some spots
on the canvas smudged. Like

a painting with too much water
on the lilies, bleeding unwanted

textures, dark patches at the edge.
Perhaps there’s a house, trees and

shrubs in the background. Or
is that children on the horizon,

playing catch or red rover,
tug-of-war or tag? Perhaps a single

figure along the shadowy line? Maybe
it’s two, one holding up the other.

*

Jo Taylor is a retired, 35-year English teacher from Georgia. In 2021, she published her first collection of poems, Strange Fire, and in 2025, she published her second book, Come before Winter (Kelsay Books). She has been nominated for the Pushcart and Best of the Net. Connect with her on Facebook or at https://www.jotaylorwrites.com/

Shadows by Daye Phillippo

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Shadows

          for Jan

She called to say that the shadow they saw
     is esophageal cancer. A life-long smoker,

she’s not surprised, but is shaken. I ask
     what I can do. Pray, honey, just pray.

Late February mud and ice, rivulets of snow-melt.
     On the way up from the barn last night, coyotes,

high-pitched yip and sing from the back fencerow,
     leafless trees inked on the fiery horizon,

the howls growing louder, their shrieking lope
     coming closer. It’s breeding season, the males

aggressive, unhinged and one-thing.
     In the dark woods, border north of the house

that slopes to the creek, the leafless trees
     stand as close as soldiers shoulder-to-shoulder

or the posts of a frontier enclosure. There, a coyote,
     dark shape appearing, disappearing

among trees, its narrow hips tucked under,
     body low, elongated, a dark shadow, skulking.

*

Daye Phillippo taught English at Purdue University and her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Presence, The Midwest Quarterly, Cider Press Review, One Art, Shenandoah, The Windhover, and many others. She lives and writes in rural Indiana where she hosts a monthly Poetry Hour at her local library. Thunderhead (Slant, 2020) was her debut full-length collection. You may find more of her work on her website: dayephillippo.com

Four Poems by Rachel Custer

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Type

1.

The women huddled outside One Eyed Jacks, taking nips
of cheap whiskey secreted inside their trunks, a savings
when it takes a pint to get you there, though at five or six
I wasn’t sure where they were trying to go, but leaving
that, I knew I wanted to go with them. I cherried my lips
red with Lifesavers and smoked crayons, watched them giving
themselves to ugly men against the alleyway wall, the bricks
I ran my hands over the next day, listening, even believing
they might tell me how to hold a woman, how to kiss
her like an ugly man, but better, so she felt I was saving
her from a lifetime of ugly men with their spitting dip
and rotting teeth, their hands filthy with a kind of living
I didn’t want to understand, but wanted to imitate well
enough to touch a woman in a way that might send me to Hell.

2.

The first time I touch a woman (in a way that might send me to Hell
the way some see) I wash her feet. A ceremony at church, it’s
reminiscent of Christ at the Last Supper. Desire swells
like fear inside my chest. While I kneel before her, she sits,
looking down at me from perfect righteousness. I know how Adam fell
from Grace: he tasted what a woman gave him. Her foot fits
perfectly inside my teenage hand. I vibrate for her like a rung bell.
A song fills the space between us: Just As I Am. The candles, lit
beside Communion bread. Just As I Am, dear God, I want to tell
You how I feel for You is how I feel for her, love or snake-bit
or something else terrifying. I repent. Her soft skin smells
like cherry blossoms. What if? dear God, what if I don’t repent?
More than anything, I long to feel safe. To know You. To understand.
Want, more than anything, peace. But her skin. My trembling hand.

3.

I want, more than anything, peace. Her skin beneath my trembling hand
is rougher than my skin. I first saw her chain smoking outside work.
All day I watched her run from station to station. Watched and planned,
along with half the men. She wasn’t beautiful, but she had a look.
Something shone from within her like a light. She swept the sand
from the factory floor like a woman waiting for deliverance. Perks
of physical labor, I guess. Sometimes she would tuck a wild strand
of hair behind her ear, and I’d know: I wanted her, whatever it took,
whatever I had to be, or give, or do. If I had to pretend
to admire the well-muscled men. If I had to drink, or sing, or fuck
like I never worried a day. I forgot to worry if I sinned.
She’d chain smoke in bed. I’d read aloud from a good book.
We made love the way she worked: frenzied and alone inside
ourselves. When she left in the morning, I bowed my head and cried.

*

Shadows

There is another town beneath this town,
where secret drinkers sneak to buy their pints
and secret lovers sneak to make their love
while sleepers sleep. I wake again to you.
There is another want beneath this want,

that doesn’t fear to touch, or to lie down
beside you, skin to skin. Oh, town that haunts
the town you see, like fog hanging above
a quiet street. (A lie cannot be true.)
The truth I know: your body is a taunt

I struggle to ignore. Your silk nightgown
wants my hands (the truth wants what it wants).
The hands beneath my hands are shadowed gloves.
The town beneath the town is moonlit blue.
The lie we speak covers the truth we can’t.

*

Lines Written Between Shifts

Smoke hangs like questions in the break shack’s air:
Do you want to die early? Don’t you feel that fear
pressing you like a machine? Aren’t you wasting
your life with work? The skinny girl says I’m fasting
again. What did you bring for lunch today?
You wish you could tell her the secret to joy.
(Is loving what you are more than what you do?)
(Is knowing when you leave here, you’re still you?)
In the parked cars, line workers hit their pipes.
One will die from the pills he takes to sleep.
Nobody will remember his given name.
The line will keep running. The press will slam
over and over all day. You’ll breathe the dirt.
Break is for questions that can’t be asked at work.

*

Sinners Anonymous

A woman kneels in the dark barn.

In the ditch before the church, hard rain washes
dye from a handful of hair.

In the basement of the church, eyes
require a girl’s surrender.

What are you sorry for? asks the preacher
of the silence, and from the silence

her silence returns.
My name is Rachel, and I’m

addicted to mercy (hi, Rachel)
looking for a deal worth kneeling for.

A woman kneels before
what makes her sorry: silence

where a girl wants sobs. Hard rain
washes the bullshit from her boots.

The preacher polishes empty pews.
Eyes polish a woman’s shame:

twenty bucks will get you
all the heat you can handle.

Tell us, girl: what are you sorry for?

*

Rachel Custer is an NEA Fellow (2019) and the author of The Temple She Became (Five Oaks Press, 2017). Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in many journals, including Rattle, OSU: The Journal, B O D Y, The American Journal of Poetry, The Antigonish Review, Open: Journal of Arts & Letters (OJAL), among others.