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Mark Gibbons
Nothing Right or Left
Curtains replaced by a nailed blanket,
Jesus snapped off at the wrists
and ankles, her grandmother's plastic crucifix,
each echo, You worthless son of a bitch.
You did it this time. She's gone.
He pours the rest of the gin on ice,
lights a joint on the electric range,
draws smoke deep, clamps back a cough.
No guts for suicide. He can't shake
the figure of a woman's nude corpse
stretched out on the bedroom floor -
nylons knotted around her neck.
How long has it been since she left him
to sicken and fend for himself?
He picks the scab on the back of his hand.
Blood spatters the counter, his socks,
the floor as he rifles through empty kitchen
drawers for towels he cannot find.
Slumped on a frayed armchair, he becomes
the hum of the refrigerator -
empty as beer bottles at his feet.
Out front a vehicle rolls to a stop.
Gravel pops him upright in his chair.
Dogs bark; a car door squeaks and slams;
sacks crackle in somebody's arms. Spike
heels tap out hope and alarm,
then fade down the sidewalk and gone.
Also by Mark Gibbons Rainbow Escalator -->
Mark Gibbons lives in Missoula, Montana with his wife and two sons where he's a poet in the schools with the Missoula Writing Collaborative. He drives truck and moves furniture to pay rent. His poems have appeared in CutBank, Talking River Review, The Midwest Quarterly, The Comstock Review and Rattle. His second chapbook, Circling Home, due out this summer, won the Scattered Cairns Press chapbook contest. His first collection of poems was entitled Something Inside Us, 1995.
Mark can be reached by email at markgibbons@gumballpoetry.com
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