Naked heels sledgehammered panic through her femurs
broke nails into her coffin
sparked asphalt
cracks ripping out
like stretch marks
road swelled awake
under February slush-slobber
ready to burst with tar & terror.
Overcast,
- the gray palm of God -
came down to cup her like a
fruit fly
her
impotent
buzzing
heart like a brick in a dryer
head like a cup on a dryer
body tumbling inside itself
like the guts of a dryer
under the rolling power lines,
electricity licked and burned off her soles
like the smoking rubber of an axle break
til everything soft on her was just a stench.
~~
Jamie Manias earned their MFA in poetry at Bowling Green State University, where they served as an assistant editor for Mid-American Review and wrote poems about microbiology. They now work with three lovely Heidelberg Windmills as a pressman at Alice-Louise Press printing letterpress stationery and snarky greeting cards. Their work has been published in places such as The Kismet Magazine, Fruitslice, and Rat's Ass Review. They can be found on Instagram at @jamiemanias.
