Sydney Briar Is Alive
Another cold, Dark, snowy night
and no way out of bed. Trapped
by Listeria and muscle relaxers,
precipitation against the window
like gravel against metal on an August
dragstrip afternoon. I hear “Where
we going, Johnny?” “To a new place
that isn’t even there yet,” and more
than zombonis I want to tag along.
But my head’s still half in the trash can.
The title and the quotations in the above work are taken from the movie Pontypool (Bruce McDonald, 2008).
Robert Beveridge (he/him) makes noise (xterminal.bandcamp.com) and writes poetry in Akron, OH. Recent/upcoming appearances in Page and Spine, The Pointed Circle, and Failed Haiku, among others.
Feeling: A Matter of Perspective
They don’t feel a thing: some neighbor kid, chasing fireflies, as she pulls the glowing light from the back of a lightning bug and places it on her finger like a ring.
I doubt.
You’ll hardly feel a thing: the nurse, to my son, always, before she sticks a long needle in his little arm and covers it with a colorful band-aid before he can say ouch.
I conspire.
He barely felt a thing: the driver of the garbage truck, stopped at a red light at the intersection of 99th and Wornall Road at two or three in the morning, when a small car rear-ends his truck.
I reconcile.
They didn’t feel a thing: two people, at least one too drunk to drive, in the car that slams full speed into the back of the garbage truck and kills them both instantly.
I hope.
As a child
as a mother
as a woman
as a daughter whose dad was in that car,
I felt it all.
Shelley Logan lives in St. Louis with her family. When she isn’t writing, she is thinking about writing. Her creative nonfiction has appeared and/or is forthcoming in Potato Soup Journal and Moonlight Mag.
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