Poetry: Selections from 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.

In the End

 

the descendants of laboratory rats

of humanity, crude pumped from Arlington Cemetery

 

compared to the oil the dinosaurs left behind

the waste will seem limitless

even to environmentalists.

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

Unwinding

 

I know time has passed because

my reflection has been replaced

by the face of a stranger. The daffodils and tulips

have disappeared under flurries of overnight snow, and I have finished

all of my imaginary conversations, imaginary letters.

We had a lot to talk about.

 

There is no small talk, I don’t know

where to start. I tell you I miss the pitter patter of tiny feet

because I know that even our children are older.

I refuse to acknowledge the wild-haired, gray-eyed woman

across from me because

it can’t have been that long ago.

Holly Day has been an instructor at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis since 2000. Her writing has recently appeared in Hubbub, Grain, and Third Wednesday, and her newest books are The Tooth is the Largest Organ in the Human Body (Anaphora Literary Press), Book of Beasts (Weasel Press), Bound in Ice (Shanti Arts), and Music Composition for Dummies (Wiley).