By Jennie Malboeuf
We step off the curb into
glass diamonds. Confetti
cuts our feet; the drunks
mistake the street
for a trash bin and we crunch
more lotto tickets than leaves.
Where can we move to?
we take turns asking one
another. There isn’t a night
lately that we don’t hear I don’t
give a fuck screamed two houses
down. And every neighbor
is old or killing themselves.
We’ve done our time you say.
Most often I agree — until
I catch glimpse of the fresh
white paint on the beadboard
of the porch ceiling.
Or I remember we stood still
and watched three foxes
wander softly from the schoolyard
a few weeks back.
Jennie Malboeuf is a native of Kentucky. Her work is forthcoming in Poet Lore, the Potomac Review, The Cortland Review, and Unsplendid, is currently featured on The Pinch, and has been published in the Southeast Review, Mid-American Review, Mississippi Review, and Columbia Poetry Review. She was recently awarded a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Award, was a finalist for the Arts & Letters Rumi Prize, the Akron Poetry Prize, the Iowa Review Prize, and was shortlisted by the Missouri Review Editors’ Prizes. She lives in North Carolina and teaches writing at Guilford College.
