Breadcrumb #560

ALLAN LAKE

Regular cleans for household machines;
my aging car ingests best oil.
Helping them last to save a planet
plus poverty breeds frugality.
religious fundamentalism, bullet-riddled
‘America’ , Chinese & Russian hacking,
Saudi journalist dismembering, global
warmongering & warming, etcetera

But slamming screen door is missing
thingy that slows its zeal to embrace
door frame. Plaster of living room
cracking; extractor fan over the stove
not keen on extracting ; switches stick
and the clock, rescued by roadside,
is a bit slow but – Hallelujah –
somewhere there’s someone handy,
capable of fixing little things
for a slice of little incomes.
Must call one soon, right after
I figure out where to start.

• • •

Breadcrumb #558

TIM MCGINNIS

burnt honesty
hurt her trembling fingers,
and
she stuck them in her mouth.

here her tongue found the food
her hunger wanted;
here her teeth left staggered hints
of force on ripe dates, red dates

her mouth could not pluck from the palm.
the hole wore on.
she lay back
on the sheets, the overhead spinning

and she felt her hand slip out,
wet and hot with the slap of his face.
she slammed the door, over again
and over again [again again again

again] in memory, gingerly
holding her fingertips
to dry
in the air.

• • •

Breadcrumb #557

KELLY THOMPSON

Bad girls
have babies
lie in beds they
made out of spit and
welfare checks
get their checks docked
for making more than $700
Good thing they can't
buy cigarettes
Their kids have clean
clothes the first week of
the month and cans of
ravioli, ramen noodles,
cereal most days.
Toilet paper requires cash though-
they run out of that and
diapers, mostly.
Bad girls
sit on the stoop
blow smoke rings
off your dicks.
What else do you
want them to do?
Dance?

• • •

Breadcrumb #556

ALEXANDRA Watson

We meet here: a congregation 
of glowworms in streetlight 

all thunder of pulses, 
storm of torn silk & kohl.

Who suffers?
The untouched.

Me, I’m lovesick of crushed sugar,
you’ve got Remy in your sweat &

leopard eyes, a lip ring and riddims, 
& piercings on your curves.

Soon, your curls spread 
on my palm frond pillow. 

With fingertips up slips, I paint 
a poppy with no context, 

a pale pink ram skull, 
a hollyhock blossom, its pollan, 

a coral landscape. Locate the clam 
with a wink, you slick of dark road

bathed in melon skeletons & champagne, 
your sleepy eyes flutter like leaves. 

I leave you a latticework of backscratch, 
a dripping crystal storm of gooseflesh. 

Don’t leave. Be mint tea, pink sprinkler, and dew. 
By morning, be firefly, still twinkling.

• • •