All the Lost Ones
BY Gay Giordano
doors are scripted with curses
faces under torn paper roll their eyes
announcing things already happened
children wipe noses on strangers' skirts
then run off to eat the night
a mother spills from the bricks
swaying against an alley wall
buttery hands grab her waist
moons are clamoring from their cages
to leave this little slice of universe
it doesn't matter who's under her skirts
as long as it deafens the city's roars
pale hands toss a vague astronomy
like dirt on a grave and she is left behind
to lick up the glimmer
The Butcher
every day he watches blood
run down the grooves of nails
to a floor matted with footprints
the dust of everyone's passage
a smell of hostile and hostage meat
oars out of the freezer's mist
to remind him he is still here
rowing in emptied veins
he drags his wounded honor around
like a defeated heavyweight
papers innumerable breasts flanks tongues
all the parts of a woman he imagines
succulent under their wraps
he is clumsy with unspent longing
a springtime's noisy birth
wet with unraveling fists
Gay reads "All the Lost Ones" & "The Butcher"
Gay Giordano got her BA from Carnegie Mellon University in creative writing and her MA in philosophy at The New School for Social Research. She has been published in Mudfish, r.kv.r.y, The South Carolina Review, The Oakland Review, Lullwater Review, Illya's Honey, and several other journals. She has been a resident at VCCA, The Martha’s Vineyard Writer’s Residency, the Banff Center for the Arts, Bennington College, and the Dorland Mountain Arts Colony. She lives in New York City with her husband, who wishes she'd spend more time helping him with his translations of German literature despite her knowing about 10 German words.