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This writing was accepted for publication in the 108 page perfect-bound ISSN# / ISBN# issue/book “Going Off-Grid” Down in the Dirt, v169 (the Mar. 2020 Issue) Order the paperback book:

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Watching the News in a Room that is Not Mine

S. Preston Duncan

Bug season
blue bodies slipping into a pool of blue light
a hoarse rug widening in clasped wings
banquets of tremoring leaves
peeling alphabets from a terminology
of ceilings
we had been trying
not to think about.

The room flickers like a row
of newsreel projectors
on a cigarette council

If there were a screen
we’d see the whole story
        the woman on the bridge
        without the stone in her stomach
without the shriek in her river.

We’d see ghost writers wringing dresses
onto a print run of charcoal and blush
we’d see the names of women we tried
to forget
a sentence of mothy ink under locked eyes
bleeding like an alleyway
in history.
        Like an ashtray in the rain.

If you saw the way daughters pass
like laws from hand to hand
in auburn silence
you’d think there was a crime in the contract.

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