A Parting Gift

by Miranda Stone

I am like the hollow bones of a bird
in her palm. Toeing the precarious
line that divides her adoration
from her contempt, I wait for her fist
to close, reducing me to brittle slivers
she can brush from her fingers.

I feel for the ring on my left hand,
a force of habit, and remember
I no longer have reason to wear it.
She wrapped her own ring neatly
as a birthday present. It was her gift
to me the day I signed the papers,
a proposal in reverse.

Easy Target

by Miranda Stone

Give me another hit of blessed oblivion,
a haze to wash away the self-awareness.
Scars form on my skin, smooth and sheer
as tissue paper, to conceal festering sores.
Yet you expertly sniff out the old wounds.
To a man like you, with a charming smile
and a gun in your hand, I am fish in a barrel.

Give and Take

by Miranda Stone

In sleep, the fight has left you.
Face slack, lips parted, you gasp
as if taken aback in your dream.
With sprawling limbs you encroach
upon my side of the bed. A wrist bone
prods my shoulder. A toe grazes my shin.

I press my palms against your ribs
and push. You roll across the dividing line,
the sheet gliding over your bare skin.
I marvel at the distance between us.
You have relinquished half a foot of space.
In sleep, you are the picture of compromise.
Awake, you refuse to concede a single inch.

Sunday Drive

by Miranda Stone

The leaden sky, pregnant with rain
makes our heads throb, as though we have
barometers inside our skulls.
The car’s lowered windows offer no relief
from air thick as a pot of lukewarm soup.

We are lost. We have driven past
the same clapboard house three times.
The German Shepherd in the yard
barrels toward us, tail wagging
as it chases our car down the dirt road.

Cruel words are barbs resting on our tongues.
The brutal heat forces them from our mouths.
You’re selfish.
You make me sick.
I can’t stand the sight of you.
I don’t love you anymore.

We make another circle. The German Shepherd
no longer gives chase, for we’re old friends now.
Above us, the sky splits open. Fat drops strike
the windshield like small stones.
We leave the windows down, preferring the storm
to the silence between us, weighted heavy
with words as yet unsaid.

Lore

by Miranda Stone

Strip mining scars
the bare skin of the mountains.
Ridges of stone and wood
rise against the sky, blotting out
early afternoon sunlight.

Niches carved in slate
house the copper moonshine stills. In barns,
in shacks men stir sugar and corn
to produce liquid clear and pure
as the strychnine the holy rollers drink
in plank churches on Sundays.
Some survive the serpent’s bite.
Those who succumb lack faith in the god
speaking in tongues to the congregation.

Even in the mountain mist of dawn
when the bobcats slink through the woods,
a single searchlight washes over stone.
A train piled high with powdered coal
snakes its way past clapboard houses.
High above on the mountainside,
rickety shafts sleep, shut up in darkness.