Skip to main content

Two poems by Molly Riggs


spilled peas

if the next day
i feel a burst beneath my pinky toe
lift my foot in disgust
to find a dime of green mush
ground into the tile’s grout
i will probably not cry
despite my pulsing eyelids
the way my head whirs and burns
and the poison swirls in my lower gut
i will not growl
either i have no propensity for anger

i think i will sink to the floor
curl up in a pea
and press my cheek into the caulking
hard enough to leave an impression

---

Washing Up

What strikes me most is how implicit
it is in writing to self-condemn
before you’ve even begun. Words
wrung from my folds like an old
dish rag, starved over the faucet
only until exposed to the stream
then for the wringing. The echo
of a landline brr-inging 
through an empty home, hiss of a lit match
and the whir. Smoke wisps and dissipates
the thin line of motivation
dwindling. Or is it fear? A lost voice
when you need to scream for safety.
An intermittent lapse in judgement 
When you’ve assumed yourself sound. 
Can I become the next iteration of me 
already? I flinch at loud volumes, lately.
Headache at simple puzzles, unhinged
by unfit pieces; a complete mirror
meltdown could externally appear as nothing
like when I see my blank face reflected
in the window of a train car
urged to palm my nose into my brain.
Does death smell like dish soap
or is that only for the chaste?
The task is just to write a damn poem.
Even that’s awash. 

---

Molly Riggs is a literary fiction and poetry writer living in Harlem. Shortly after graduating with her degree in English from the University of Northern Colorado and moving to New York City, she published her debut novel, Blue Ink, through New Degree Press. She has also published works of poetry in the literary magazines, The Crucible and Rainy Day. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Home by Jessa Forest

Home scratches at her shingles with tree branch fingers, pulls the air conditioning unit close to her grimy aluminum siding, and keens an empty song of mourning. We found her wandering the tornado snarled wild three months ago, starved and lonely. She doesn’t know how to take care of herself, you see? We fed her shards of dining room tables, kindling for the fireplace, and cast iron bathtubs clawed feet first. She was slow to recover so we gutted her plumbing, ripped out her nerves, and rewired the electricity. She let the water in every time it rained so we put a new roof on her and let her out for regular walks around the wolf pen. Let her mingle with the vultures, I said, let her feel useful and clean up the dead but no one wanted to listen. We found rot an mold in her corners, infused her insulation with antibiotics, and quarantined her for two weeks while she belched ladderback chairs, sofa cushions, wind chimes, and broken bookcases. She still has her bad days. After feeding time
86 comments
Read more

Smoking and Swearing by Ian Manson

He’s stood outside, he’s on his break. He’s unsure whether to be smoking or swearing. He decides on both. Inhale. Fuuuck! Inhale. Fuuuck! A person, a visitor, or a patient. Heading to the hospital, sees his scrubs and scowls. “ It’s not very professional for a nurse to be smoking and swearing. ” But he doesn’t care. He’s already done his good deed for the morning and by midnight he’ll have done a dozen more. Yesterday was a paltry four. Tomorrow’s shift will be five or two or maybe eight, and another night of finishing late. Inhale. Fuuuck! He breathes a cloud of smoke. Watches it swirling, ascending, a spirit en-route to heaven. The person’s saintly sanctimony means nothing to him. Because he’s on his break. And he’s smoking, and he’s swearing. --- Originally from Scotland, Ian has lived and worked in Worcestershire for the last 11 years. He can normally be found performing his poetry and prose at events on the Worcester spoken word scene
26 comments
Read more

“Are You So Tired Then, Stranger?” by Ace Boggess

  —Dick Allen, “B&B”    Wind exhausts with its icy fists. Knives of rain wear me down, & leaves in their helicopter swirls like leaflets dropped from a plane. October depletes me, & November. They’ve too much busyness. They send me spinning, dancing, lonely with the rake, the broom. I surrender, collapsing like an old barn, debris of me piling in a chair with clear view of the television.  News is on. It spends me. Talk of politics, also. I’d like  to shut up the voices that fatigue. They hum like a B-flat in the pipes. They bicker & scold, condemn. They expend me like carrying  groceries up a flight of stairs  until I’m too drained to care  which side they’re on. --- Ace Boggess is author of six books of poetry, including  Escape Envy  (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2021),  I Have Lost the Art of Dreaming It So , and  The Prisoners . His writing has appeared in  Michigan Quarterly Review, Notre Dame Review, Harvard Review, Mid-American Review,  and other journals. An ex-c
1 comment
Read more