The Gatekeeper
My dad calledmiddle of the pandemic;
…stage four cancer.
Placing my weight on
gallows humor, I admonished,
“Couldn’t you just get the virus, like everyone else?”
His chuckle,
soft sawdust.
I imagined being there:
unable to hug him, hold his hand.
Saying goodbye
across a green-black lawn.
When travel was allowed, hotels re-opened,
I texted, we can come.
She doesn’t want you here.
I sobbed again
for the loss of him,
the loss of me;
daddy’s girl.
Pink Blue Murder
Cops killed a womanin distress
in the pink brick building.
She smashed everything,
held a knife,
“threatening”,
scared men so early on Sunday.
I wondered,
Did she lose her job, couldn’t make rent?
Lost her mind, alone?
In summers
she’d prop her window open
with the Bhagavad Gita;
sign of a season.
This frozen spring
windows hold their breath.
Stigmata
My wrist pain startedbefore the uprising,
I thought it was a storm.
Bone on squeaking bone. Deep,
stabbing aches.
Decades
since the police hurt them, dragged
from a protest, witness.
Handcuffed, hands twisted
little, plucked wings.
Twenty years later,
my wrists, stigmata,
portend insurgency.
List of Images:
1. Banner: Copper St. Stairs
2. Grotto
3. U.S. Can
4. Alley Window
5. Tough Times
6. I Can’t Breathe
7. Rosaries
8. Greenway Train
9. Highline Deer
10. Outlaw’s Grave – Boot Hill
11. A Difference
12. Mask at the Lake
M.S. Evans is a writer and visual artist. Originally from Seattle, she currently lives in her family’s old town of Butte, Montana. Her work has been published in Re-Side, Black Bough Poetry and previously in ‘Geographies’ from Ice Floe Press. Twitter: @SeaNettleInk Instagram: @permacrust
Page design and edits: Robert Frede Kenter.
IceFloe Press 