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Killing, riding

 

This like we, likely, is this is, undo.  Take this out not far but take it widely, so it sits beside us.  It should serve as something undid, or else, dust.  I hurry to touch it.  I hurry to peel me up, and finger, and hurry to hand it over as something, something over more than, breaks from over what, from that broken smoothness. This sums us up.  This is that knuckle we said would carry things into a broad, clear brightness, and bend and watch them burn.

 

 

Killing, riding, II

 

We weren’t quite there yet but you knew to look behind us, and this seemed to matter.  What did you see?  Something pressed, is pressing, will not let comfort strip and enter us, bend us inward.  Still, I took you forward and a leaning overtook me.  Another kind of expectation.  You said put it down and I did, but within seconds I was not the same and you noticed, changed your mind, and entered something I did not recognize yet made a name for, and forgot.

 

 

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SHYA SCANLON is the Fiction Reviews Editor for The Nervous Breakdown. Scanlon's work has appeared in the Mississippi Review, Literary Review, New York Quarterly, Guernica Magazine, Opium Magazine, and others. His book of prose poetry, In This Alone Impulse, was published by Noemi Press in January, 2010. In 2009, his novel Forecast was serialized online across 42 journals and literary blogs as part of the Forecast 42 Project. Forecast will be published by Flatmancrooked in December, 2010. He received his MFA from Brown University, where he was awarded the John Hawkes Prize in Fiction. Please visit him at www.shyascanlon.com.

4 responses to “Killing, riding I & II”

  1. I just love these two poems to pieces, Shya. Killing, riding. Hell yeah. Anytime.

  2. […] are these poems […]

  3. Ducky Wilson says:

    The subway is one of my favorite things about NY. Love the way you invoke it and the snapshots I glean.

  4. […] written with Kelly Haramis, appeared in Artifice, issue #1. Shya Scanlon is a Featured Poetry Author this week (ending on Sunday) at The Nervous Breakdown. His self-interview appears there, too. And […]

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