by Aleena Sharif
One Must Have a Mind of Shadows
This is the room of the winter sun, but in a few hours
it will be dark like the candle-lit barn of last year’s pig roast.
Guests filed past the half-barrel like a coffin,
their forks and knives ready.
Maybe we are old souls, but not enough of beast.
Flip a switch and the galaxy tumbles.
Consider this: the barrel is not always a gun.
Sometimes it’s for sage; a graveyard of pork.
Last October the blackened pods fell from the locust trees.
We walked among leaves into the frozen dimension
bearing the dark heart of the abattoir. Not hearing
the cooing of pigeons, we were forgetting who we are.
Stephanie K. Merrill is a retired high school English teacher. Her poems have been published in The Rise Up Review, Feral, UCity Review, Moist Poetry Journal, Amethyst Review, One Art, Anti-Heroin Chic, Eunoia Review, and elsewhere. Stephanie K. Merrill is a Pushcart Prize nominee. She lives in Austin, Texas. @StephanieKMerrill@zirk.us.
Aleena Sharif was born in Pakistan and went to school at Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. She graduated with a BFA and a minor in Art History. After graduating she has exhibited in New York, Los Angeles, London, Italy, Pakistan as well as many virtual galleries. She currently continues her practice between California and Pakistan where she holds open studies in hope to create a safe space for nude paintings to be shown.