Stacy Post is a midwestern writer whose first poetry chapbook, Sudden Departures, debuted in
2013 with Finishing Line Press. Her poems have appeared in Midwestern Gothic, Iodine Poetry
Journal and others. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee for short fiction, and can be found online at:
www.stacypost.com
C lear ing the Detr itus
Stacy Post /
A hand appears, nails painted,
beside the murky milk jug
and a bobbing bloated diaper.
It isn’t real or it doesn’t seem real
so we poke it with a stick.
so we run
fast and hard
wishing we could erase
these last few minutes
and return to the safety
of Saturday morning cartoons—
A soup can rises and rolls.
Her head, a deflated
basketball covered in algae,
turns over.
Her eyes, congealed
with river secrets,
frighten us
Jason Siew is a daytime designer/
night-time illustrator/full-time
daydreamer from Singapore.
but I stop, and turn back,
from her elbows
even a Diet Coke bottle
with taped birthday wrap.
pluck leaves from strangled hair
coax free shredded plastic bags
Her legs bounce, suddenly free,
her swollen feet still buckled into dancing shoes.