"Suddenly the sky turned blood-red. [ . . .]Year after year,
I stood there, trembling with fright.
And I felt a loud, unending scream piercing nature."
--Edvard Munch (the Scream)
in sleeping positions of flowered poses,
we sleep with thorns of desert-dirt
between our fingers: bodies cursed silent.
Perching,
they isolated a certain few.
Smoldering, as they sinned,
they carried mesh bags of dirty works.
Standing crowded in the line of death,
we stood on their floor
and did what we were told.
In the wooded regions of their bodies,
they’d stir things up unholy.
Heavy, diving birds
spread sad skirts wide open
like branches of a tree.
Unanesthetized, in an endless loop
of resistance, we felt bullets heckling
and knives mangling.
Necks and breasts were squeezed small.
Hands yanked us to places
where tongues of whiskey
soured our breath. Cursed silent,
this is when the body breaks.
White-hot,
the town is thirsty.
The desert and its creatures play;
they buzz about barking.
Mary Hamrick was born in New York and moved to Florida when she was a young girl. Her writing often reflects the contrast between her Northern and Southern upbringing. Current publications include Arabesques Press, Architecture Ink, Cezanne’s Carrot, Coe Review, Howling Dog Press (OMEGA 6), Lucidity Poetry Journal, Ocean Magazine, On the Page Magazine, Pemmican, Poetry Repair Shop, Poems Niederngasse, Potomac Review, Rosebud Magazine, Scrivener’s Pen, Tattoo Highway, The Barricade, The Binnacle, The Harrow, The New Verse News, The Subway Chronicles and others.
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