The Paddock Review

…..

Arhythmic

 

This cracked concrete, this broken 

connection searing your brand 

into another flank. I can’t get

 

these songs out of my head. I re-route 

a melody in the middle of the night—

bridge after bridge. An endless supply

 

of empty rooms. One day they’ll call me 

the orator, but today I tend the curtains,

call in a play. I count three leaves and memorize burns: 

 

the number on the back of your sweatshirt,

my mother in the director’s chair, one bird,

then another damn bird. This eddy, a quiet gravity, a pool

 

to pull myself closer to you. I keep opening a new door

and another bottle of wine. When I should have been

 nesting the idea of calling you a home.

……

This poem is from the chapbook Metal House of Cards by Amanda Maret Scharf and Hannah Smith (Finishing Line Press), and is available at https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/metal-house-of-cards-by-amanda-maret-scharf-and-hannah-smith/

Metal House of Cards explores the interconnections between #place, #relationships, and the #environment. These collaborative poems weave together two voices to tell a single story about #queer #love. In the wake of a lost relationship, the speaker recounts memories, weighing the costs and possibilities of seeing and being seen. This chapbook was written during a midwestern power outage, and its poems speak to the electric nature of collaboration and surprise.

Amanda Maret Scharf is a poet from Los Angeles. Her poems have been published in Pleiades, Poetry Northwest, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere. She is the co-founder of small press and artist collaboration, mixedgreens. During her MFA at Ohio State, she served as Poetry Editor for The Journal. 

Hannah Smith is a writer living in Dallas, Texas. She received an MFA in poetry at the Ohio State University, where she served as the Managing Editor of The Journal. Her poems have been published in Gulf Coast, Ninth Letter, Mississippi Review, and elsewhere.