The thunder was growling
like any defenseless thing
and the birds flew in circles
over our heads. Everything
was tired; the branches lied
vine-like over the rain-slick
street like lost shoelaces
inching back into pairs,
and we bent our boredom
to the back burner in origami
folds. The whole store sat unnoticed
which, to the lot of us, led
to a collective unrest.
I tucked the worn rags into water
and you, with your names
I’ll forget easily when it’s time,
cleared the mold off
of every peach. These days,
in my monotony,
I am a thing capable of rotting,
scared or stoned, a still-stemmed
stone fruit already molding,
before the bird wings catch
in the fence snares, before
the stars yelp back to life,
before anyone can taste it,
before anyone would care.
Kara Goughnour is a writer and documentarian living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. They are the author of “Mixed Tapes,” forthcoming in the Ghost City Press Summer 2019 Micro-Chap Series. They are the recipient of the 2018 Gerald Stern Poetry Award, and have work published or forthcoming in The Bitchin’ Kitsch, Third Point Press, and over forty others. Follow them on Twitter and Instagram @kara_goughnour or read their collected and exclusive works at karagoughnour.com.
Rachel Bower is a poet and research fellow at the University of Leeds. Her pamphlet, Moon Milk, will be published with Valley Press in May 2018. She is currently co-editing an anthology with Helen Mort entitled Verse Matters, which is out with Valley Press in November 2017. Her book, Epistolarity and World Literature, 1980-2010 will be published by Palgrave Macmillan in August 2017. Rachel’s poems have been published by Stand Magazine, BBC Radio, Now Then Magazine, Valley Press, Three Drops Press, The Stare’s Nest, Pankhearst and others, and she has had poems shortlisted for several prizes, including The London Magazine Poetry Prize and the Plough Prize 2016. She is also the founder of Verse Matters, a feminist arts collective in Sheffield.
Foxglove Journal 