Marginalia
You look at me
like I’m the last person
you want to see,
eyes welled up with
heartbreak full of buckshot
and the thunderous purr
of a chainsaw.6
The blood rinses
these ink-stained hands7
and trembling
memory, widowed.
My love is little notes in the margins
written in dark cursive,8
forgotten asides,
misspent connections
ring like mallets
raked down sun-dried spines
At a table
with vampires and thieves9
ready to chew through
red meat,
drawn and quartered
by four mares.
It’s hard to keep secrets
from people who speak
with spirits.
They tell me:
We cannot go back.
What is past
won’t be undone,
only forward now,
and hope for something
new.
______________________________
6 Stephen Graham Jones “My Heart is a Chainsaw”
7 Joan Naviyuk Kane “Late Successional”
8 Joan Naviyuk Kane “More Dissipate”
9 Hooray for the Riff Raff “Pierced Arrows”
By tripp j crouse
Biography:
Biography:
tripp j crouse (they/them) is niizh manidoowag (Two-Spirit) Ojibwe. They write poetry and perform spoken word. tripp serves as a poetry reader for Anomalous Press, or ANMLY, and has poetry published or forthcoming in The Yellow Medicine Review, oddball magazine, Grassroots, Zygote in My Coffee, Words & Whispers and beestung. Originally from the Midwest, Tripp now calls Dzantik’i Heeni (Juneau, Alaska) home.