On the same side
turn a car
into a parallelogram,
an oft-read Bible,
a shelf of books
with a few
missing, a man
sitting and a woman
standing. Her hand
is on his shoulder.
His head lolls forward.
Her feet are anxious.
Kevin C. Stewart is the author of The Way Things Always Happen Here, a collection of stories, and Margot, winner of the Texas Review Novella Prize. He teaches at Carroll College and lives in Helena, Montana.
WYATT TOWNLEY
Walking is falling forward. Running // is falling faster. Watch the dark. It falls / so slowly while the sun yanks the rug // out from under you. At night some fall over / a book into a story. Some fall // for each other. We have fallen all the way / here.
ADRIENNE SU
I have come to my senses. / I believe in books, / but they have their place. / The flowers in them lack scent. / Books cannot feed you; / they are at their worst / when imitating romance, / not because they don’t / get it but because / they do: romance is mental.
ROBERT CORDING
I’m standing in the exact spot / of this photograph, looking at the past— / my middle son, still alive, lying on the rug / at my feet in my oldest son’s house. / On his wide chest, his niece, weeks old, / sleeps, adrift perhaps in the familiarity / of the heart’s steady beat, her memory / of him formed mostly by this photograph.
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