Open Carry

Babies, ice cream cones, umbrellas, cell phones, walking sticks,
Groceries, the newspaper, a fresh pizza, flowers for the one you love,
Car keys, a purse, pen and paper, a snack, reading glasses,
A book, two books, a Bible, a pair of gloves, lip balm, a lipstick,
Bicycle helmet, a hairbrush, gum and breath mints, a hand mirror,
Earbuds and a pocket watch, a penknife, nail clippers,
Camera, screwdriver, hammer and pliers, a wrench,
Flip-flops and a towel, a folding chair, a handkerchief,
Which is a very strange word when you look at it,
A Leatherman, another strange word, but we got used to it

Prescience

Prescience The sky’s a graveyard full of ghosts and fossils. No one’s dared to bury barley; it hasn’t rained in thirty days. Neither almanac nor bible tells how to predict an ending. I thought I understood the lifespan of a star, but I was wrong: their deaths are expanding, infinite; I’m the thing inconsequential, impermanent. […]

Fish Fry

Andrew Weatherly hears inspiration from dying trees, Hawaiian shirts, fires, and other poets. He is blessed to live in the hood, teach adults to read, dance in the streets in Asheville, NC, and occasionally slip off on pilgrimages to sacred mountains. He’s been published in BlazeVox, Belle Reve, Axe Factory, Former People, Danse Macabre, Cordite, the […]

White Girls

White Girls Cede to other women skin tints of caramel, taffy, and fancy maple, heady Jamaican vanilla extract in amber glass. The glow of copper wire. Oxides, raw or burnt sienna. The roughed-up walnut heartwood deepened on roofs of the Lower Ninth Ward. The songs black poets sing. Eyeball my elbows. Cabbage whitenesses, garden spawn. […]

Agnes Person | Just Desserts

Below is Part 8 of 23 monthly installments for Visitant. ◄◄ Read the prologue / introduction: Meet Agnes Person ◄ Read the previous installment | Rescue Just Desserts The day after Labor Day, Agnes Person is almost late. She’s been too fussy about frontal details. Never mind that the back of her head looks like a leftover […]

Reckoning

Reckoning Men finger pockets, lick lips, squint into the bright light of too much possibility. Women narrow eyes like foxes guarding layers. The world has become Winter. They read about growing tomatoes, generators; watching the headlines and the skylines, skittish, waiting. Storms in the sun, holes in the sky. Your father holds his bible, looking […]

Apocalypse Preparation Check List

Thomas Fucaloro is the author of two books of poetry published by Three Rooms Press, most recently It Starts from the Belly and Blooms, which received rave reviews. The winner of a performance grant from the Staten Island Council of the Arts and the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, he has been on three national slam […]