“False Vacuum” and “Pax Atlanta” Poetry by Alyse Knorr
“False Vacuum” and “Pax Atlanta” by Alyse Knorr
False Vacuum
Other ways to go:
Heat death, Big
Freeze, the girl lifting
her shirt up over her head,
moonlight on her blue bedspread,
feeling the loss before
it has happened— these are
our cosmic guarantees,
we are talking about
the end of the world here
and the answers out here get
thicker and thicker dearest
life as we know it
after you is impossible
Pax Atlanta
I.
Fruit everywhere.
Pears rolling under my father’s
car, apples dented by the asphalt,
bouncing into the high grass
of our lawn. I watch
my mother’s black pumps
pop small yellow balloons.
It is hot outside, and around
the overturned gift basket
are black slivers of worms baking
on the driveway.
II.
I never know the woman’s
name or the color of her eyes.
She is always taller than me,
with dark hair and a wisdom
in her body. The baby
she is birthing belongs to us,
together. The baby
she is birthing is ours.
Alyse Knorr is currently the assistant poetry editor of So to Speak: A Feminist Journal of Language and Art, based out of George Mason University, where she is pursuing her MFA in poetry and teaching undergraduate English. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Minnesota Review, elimae, Dark Sky Magazine, and The Avatar Review.
Post a Comment