Pillow sucked snug
to the face.  Wind
force-blown down
the throat.  Ton
of water clapped
tight to the lungs:
I had my choice
of time and place.
They call us gasp
demons.  Last
week my brother
killed a thousand
fish.  His agent—
a bear wedged
over the stream
hole.  So much
oxygen stopped.
My father stuffed
socks into vacuum
hoses.  Mother
squeezed swimmers
breathless.  But
I need sudden
panic of air,
cold drop of a day
passed quick
into fear.  Eyes
that roll.  Fists
and tears.  I wait
in parking lots
of pizzerias most,
look for wrappers
tossed to the ground.
Then, it’s easy—
a poke, or slap,
maybe no more
than a hiss.

Abigail Cloud

Abigail Cloud is editor-in-chief of Mid-American Review and teaches in the Department of English at Bowling Green State University, from which she holds an MFA. Recent poetry credits include REAL, The Mom Egg, and Gettysburg Review. Her poetry collection, Sylph, is due from Pleiades Press in 2014.

Art Credit: Henry Fuseli, The Nightmare, 1781 (variant)

24 Jun This entry was published on June 24, 2013 at 6:20 am and is filed under 1 (June 2013), Archive, Poetry. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.