when everything was pulling out like failed battalions
.
DayGlo flared its phosphorescence. Get your papers ready.
Who’s to say it’s up to you? when any man could be the guilty one.
when any hand under a hem. Napalm on his fingers.
A mirrored ball was spinning
yearbook’s magazine. How innocent we looked—our lives before
the death toll, the gallery in black and white…. What do you know about it?
I’d grown round, startling (cup of saline just to pull it off).
the rig outside was idling
.
The dime—a winged god. Silver mounted in cardboard. ’45. The last of its kind before Roosevelt died. The dime his daddy gave him.
He turned it over. The kid, half asleep. In cartoon briefs, peeing. Maybe a model. A Hess like his. With battery-powered headlights. Sure, she was pretty. But it wasn’t like he was the daddy
Kathleen Hellen’s debut collection Umberto’s Night won the poetry prize from Washington Writers’ Publishing House. She is the author of The Only Country Was the Color of My Skin, Meet Me at the Bottom, and two chapbooks. Hellen’s awards include prizes from the H.O.W. Journal and Washington Square Review.
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