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What the Neighbors Saw
by Kelly Grace Thomas

                                                                                         ​after Brigit Pegeen Kelly

Another dying doe: no
                                                                                                               A fist: sometimes
Every tooth in the china cabinet: yes
                       
 
Open on a kitchen like handcuffs: yes
Fridge full of food: yes                                           All you hear
                                                                                                               is      knives
 
True.
 
Avocado: no   A stick of softened butter: yes 
 
The mother: maybe
            The instinct: never
                           The crime scene: every time
 
Thumb pressed to butter: yes
Like flowers dying: no
Like the drains and the diapers: no
                                                                                                   This is how we fingerprint.
 
The infant’s sock. Pause. Blood, unwashed. Pause.
Keep the bedroom door closed: yes. But, no.
But have to: yes.
                                              Don’t think of blue daisies: no
 ​  I don’t.
 
The closed bedroom door: okay.
The therapist, Do you blame yourself? Sometimes: yes.
 
                                                            I can’t drive                tonight.
 
Do not say: headlights
Never ask: deer.
And please god: don’t talk about her age
 
A lonely dinner table: no  
                                                                  The                 only                 thing
 
 
to eat: yes
The how was your day: sometimes.
                                                               The steering wheel breakdowns: often
 
Breakdown and break in: just stage directions: yes.
 
And we can talk about tiny coffins: don’t
We can talk of eulogies
                                   
The outloud of: this
                                                                    No. Not yet, maybe.
I should.                                                                                                                                       No.
 
The fork scraping
            on china
                        is not teeth
                                    or rose
 
But the sound we make
To try to keep from                                                                                        
                                                  the words circling
                                                                                                   The room: yes
 
The ocean of open doors: yes
I am a swallow: yes
Please keep it shut: yes
                                                                          Keep it
 
quiet : please
 
You think          you know          about   this:                     no.
 
September, a little death: yes            
                                                   Every year: yes.
 
On the kitchen wall
the measured marks: yes                            stopped
at 3 feet 5 inches
                                                   like a frozen pond: yes
 
Me: thin ice: yes
 
You think we should try again? : no
And never.
And I hate this conversation: yes
 
Let quiet keep its rest: please
A dying anything has too much hands: yes
 
I have                   cut off                               each                        finger:
                                                               yes
I have                   burned down                the house
 
The door is still closed: yes.
 
I’m only a storm pipe
in someone else’s
                                                                                      neighborhood: yes
 
My smile a kicked in flowerpot: yes
              My mouth, this ugly shovel: yes
I can never dig out: no.
 
And the whispers circulate: shh.
               And the bus stop                         moves.
 
Street corner eyes: make
                                                                                      The front lawn of ghost
story.
 
The smallest thing missing: a tooth, a tombstone, a section of fence.
 

​

Kelly Grace Thomas is a Pushcart Prize nominee and 2016 Fellow for the Kenyon Review Young Writers Workshop. Kelly’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in the following journals: Muzzle, Rattle, PANK, decomP, Rust + Moth, Crab Creek Review, and more.  Her poem the "The Politics of Scent" was a named a semifinalist for the Crab Creek Review Poetry Contest. Kelly also works to bring poetry to under-served youth as the Manager of Education and Pedagogy for Get Lit-Words Ignite. She lives in Los Angeles and is working her debut novel Only 10,001. For more of her work, visit www.kellygracethomas.com. 
Read more..
​Fall 2016, Issue 19
ISSN 2157-8079
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