Issue 7, Winter/Spring 2009

Postscripts, by Kristina Marie Darling

I practiced hunger near the church
on West 14th St. when I prayed to you,
a man with white teeth and a crooked brow.
You were the blank face I passed
while driving on a bridge,
but you’ve nested in my hollows
as pigeons would carve crevices
sleeping cold in every clavicle
and in every bone.

*

Your voice bled from my wall’s fissures.
I’ve tried stopping them up, plugging the cracks
and thinking of my deaf grandmother singing,
but nothing’s worked. You’re a plague
of sticky locusts and my pen’s been scratched dry.
Most endings are abrupt.