NEW FEATHERS ANTHOLOGY
  • Home
  • Current Issue
  • Issues
  • About
  • Submit
  • New Feathers Award
  • Donate
  • Bookshop
  • Thanks
Previous
Next
Picture
Photo by Zoe
Killing Time
Kristy Nielsen


Waiting to get to the pause where a smile is needed,
waiting to cook the next meal, which leads to a pot 
plus dishes, etc., perhaps an interlude 
of laundry. Cleaned and folded, cooked and fed.
 
My unremitting spending of minutes, air-
conditioned hours peeled away in layers
leaving dust to vacuum and mop and magic 
away. The garbage picked up twice a week, 
 
accumulated tissues and scraps and all 
the plastic packaging: the bags and lids 
and covers and rings around the lids and covers 
beneath the covers, I can’t–
 
I move the bookcase to cover a memory
stain and turn the books around, I burn
the journals, stab the photos, urge my blurry
body to arrange some things from big 
 
to small or dead to live or . . . anything.
Loose-limbed and slouched as the drunk
who survives the crash, passive immolation 
by our lady of depression on the couch.
Previous
Next
Tweet
Share
  • Home
  • Current Issue
  • Issues
  • About
  • Submit
  • New Feathers Award
  • Donate
  • Bookshop
  • Thanks