by Tony Schanuel
Days
Day Five
b/c
all the milk here is
an ill-
informed hard on
I go out to the car & try to remember what I did
the last fifteen minutes on the toilet
but can’t
so I get out my phone &
look up the word ostrakon instead
at some
point
during the last century
everyone in
X discovered
that the sea is nothing but a
series of hollows
it is hollows
Day Four
genitals only came to refer to the sex organs during the fourteenth century
Dav Five
since coffee or false nostalgia
fixed on the woman with her back to the sun
take a picture & text it to K
who sends back an article from the Times
on Benjamin & the lyric
Day Two
the house
has never had a
TV
so morning spent sucking at each
other
on the sofa (could be)
cat’s cruel face in the mirror
what sex is the letter “A”
three days here & I’ve
yet to see anyone
doing it in the street but
scrambled eggs w/o cheese
all of his inherited icons stacked up in the closet
some of which
are badly
coffee
stained or
something else or some
other book I’ve been reading
I try scraping the pan into the sink & language
changes
ancient X is now modern
X
just like a tall
thin glass of
milk
“did you see it”
Day Eight
the man at the
market hands me back my
carton of milk
& asks
why I’m not married
three years later
back in New
York
I’ll find out that he
published a long
poem all about the present tense
I’m still not
ashamed but it’s been three
days & no one has cleaned up the cat shit in the middle of
the stone
path
which is no different than
when the last
king of X died &
someone
spray-painted FEMICIDE
on every post
office
door
*
my sex eats like a tenant in a rented house
as boxed cereal is to wheat in the field
Ann Pedone is a poet, non-fiction writer, and literary translator. She is the author of The Medea Notebooks (spring, 2023 Etruscan Press), and The Italian Professor’s Wife (2022, Press 53), as well as numerous chapbooks. Her work has appeared in The American Journal of Poetry, the Dialogist, Barrow Street, 2River, Tupelo Quarterly, and the Chicago Quarterly Review. Ann has been nominated for Best of the Net and has appeared as Best American Poetry’s “Pick of the Week”. She graduated from Bard College and has a Master’s degree in Chinese Language and Literature from Berkeley. Instagram: @annpedone.
Tony Schanuel is an award-winning photographer and visual artist who has fused a professional background in photography, digital technology, and painting and mark making to create fine art that transcends those mediums. His work has been featured in Digital Imaging Magazine, Computer Graphic Magazine, Wild Heart Journal, St. Louis Design Magazine, and is a featured artist in Cyber Palette and Extreme Graphics, two books showcasing digital artists and their work. He has exhibited at the Florence Biennale and his art is held in private and corporate collections including the Fine Arts Museum of Houston permanent photographic collection. http://www.schanuelphoto.com/.