B-roll
When the revolution is edited for television, it will
show me under a broken-ribbed umbrella on my way
to human resources. My colleagues will hold boxes
emptied of their reams. Some will rattle with the last
potted plants and photo frames. The plants will look
alien on the screen. The photos will be old, snapped
in another presidency. The high renovated windows
and bricks will look too crisp for visitor traffic and
my poets will have gone to the riots. In my office,
I will shake the rain over the empty chairs and
gather my notes for the empty chairs in the rooms
piping circulated air. I will open the folders and
my mouth and the camera will cut to a lie of white
boys in red caps who are studying business, or
how to demand second helpings of stones when
the bread has all been buried. If you wind them, they
say money and jobs and black on black and they
ask God to unlearn to listen. The story that will run
is on investment, but the story of my poets pouring
milk over chemical burns will be buried, and I will leave
and come back with my umbrella. I will leave and I will
come back for them until I’m buried with the bread.
Marshmallow Test
It turns dark at the backyard barbecue
and the lawn chairs collapse. Dark beer
sputters on our shorts and shoes and
wine has purpled all the towels inside.
The men in their forties who have read
the great philosophers are balancing
mid-priced liquor on their foreheads
and the women are keeping score. I am
dizzy and charring all the marshmallows.
Who is he? they say, because I am giggling,
because I am drunk and my heart is good
as a bubble on the tongue or a hydrangea
shaking its petals to the dark of the yard.
I think of you opening the door in the hall
when I am too drunk to say your name but
awake enough to say marry me. How you
spread your hand in my hair, how we tangle
like tree roots though you are young and
you answer, tomorrow. This is when I know
you will slide to the fire, and I will drop
what sugar I spear from the ash while you
fill and refill your cup in some other dark,
and we will unhand our secret for good.
Growing Season
Your wife grows tomatoes in your yard and they are
perfect. They are round like clown noses for the baby
to grab and they shine like ornaments she will learn
to hook and hang in time. There are enough tomatoes
for your wife to share with the town you live in, to leave
blanketed in tea towels on the porches of women
who used to be my neighbors, too. Your wife borrows
clothespins to hang your bed linen when she runs out
after the diapers. You did not tell her the story of the dog
whose hip broke in late-stage cancer, whose diapers
I helped your mother change. When the dog died,
you said it felt like losing a son. You never had a son.
Your wife does not need to know this to love you, and
she does not need to know we asked you to lift the dog
and you fled the kitchen in disgust. She does not need
to know I loved someone better than you, and when you
tore a light fixture from the ceiling in rage, I watched it
break on floor. She does not need to think of me at all
crawling in search of glass. She runs her fingers over
the vines in the garden and fills a basket while the baby
sleeps. You named the baby together. The neighbors
brought loaves of zucchini bread tied in cellophane
and pink ribbon. They said she has her father’s smile,
his eyes, his brain. When she babbles, she says Daddy
as if she loves you. When your wife repeats it, coaxing her
to say it, she does not need for any of it to be true.
Emily Kingery is an Associate Professor of English at St. Ambrose University in Davenport, Iowa, where she teaches courses in literature, writing, and linguistics. Her work appears or is forthcoming in multiple literary journals, including Burningword Literary Journal, Cathexis Northwest Press, Eastern Iowa Review, Gingerbread House, High Shelf Press, New South, PROEM, Prometheus Dreaming, Quercus, and Telepoem Booth, and she has been a Pushcart Prize nominee. She serves on the Board of Directors at the Midwest Writing Center, a non-profit organization that supports writers in the Quad Cities community.