a poem by melody nixon

Staged


HOWL
I can glimpse blank space through the gaps in breath. Not a howl, but the bones of one.

CRY
To make sounds of the bones
I clank them
Fast soft fast.

SHOUT
So this is a shout, then.

SOB
Like the roots of tress struck up by winds at night.

SPEAK
People do die in poems. I bet they're not killed by flying things though, by spaceships of the apocalypse, just slow-death listening for the mailman to come.

MAIL
My grandfather died in a letter.
He was old;
that was all.

Melody Nixon is a New Zealand-born writer living in Harlem. Her essays, fiction, and poetry have appeared or are forthcoming in Conjunctions, Cura Magazine, Midnight Breakfast, No, Dear Magazine, Hoax Publication, and The Appendix, among others. She is the Interviews Editor of The Common, Co-Founder and Editor-at-Large of Apogee Journal, and co-curator of the First Person Plural Reading Series.