74 lede

The Erotic Life of a Dog
by Philip Kobylarz

DARKNESS. BUT NOT really darkness, because in nearly dawn light, everything can be seen. A shoe under the bed. Goldfish not moving in their bowl and the water is calm. A drowned gnat lies on the surface. Bone near the mattress almost all chewed up. Maybe it'll be a good day. Maybe we'll go somewhere different.
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“Reverse Nostalgia” by Jonas Kyle-Sidell

It’s the difference between needing to find the poem you know you have inside you – for you’ve already seen the pattern, like an angel! like water on a windshield – and now: knowing you can wait. You can let it spread out like a fist opening, vet it around your belly a while. What power! like this draw-bridge I used to cross over here, in Annapolis, when. . . but what I remember
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poetry submission

Holly Day <lalena@bitstream.net>Thu, Aug 30, 2012 at 4:12 PM

Reply-To: lalena@bitstream.net
To: editor@thesquawkback.com
Dear Zack Block, Editor, Squawk Back:

The sparrows in my yard have become too domesticated. Whenever the bird feeder's empty, they tap loudly on the front panel until I come out with more seed. The birds fly into the nearby apple trees and sit and watch me refill the feeder, wait until I leave before descending in noisy flocks to crowd on the porch railing once more. If I was patient enough, I think I could train them to land on me instead of the feeder and eat straight out of my outstretched, cupped hands full of tiny millet seeds. But then I wouldn't be able to use my hands for typing, and I wouldn't have been able to write the enclosed poems.
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