by Cori Matusow
Speaking After a Funeral
If you need me to speak
like the boy you remember
to make home feel whole
for a moment again
I still know the direction
that rural accent led my voice
before I learned how to lose
it somewhere in Philadelphia.
We can go back
to when sitting on your floor
was the center of the universe
under the glow of nuclear green
plastic stars stuck to your ceiling.
A well-aged bottle of stolen
vodka the gasoline to daydreams,
always set somewhere else.
Daniel Bliss is an English professor and world-traveling poet originally from Anchorage, Alaska. His poems often focus on relationship to the long list of places he’s lived. His poems have been published or are forthcoming in Pinhole Poetry, the Bicoastal Review, League of Canadian Poets, Blood and Bourbon, BarBar, After Hours, Down in the Dirt, and others. IG: poems_from_bliss_.
Cori Matusow is a New York-based writer and photographer. Recent essays, short stories, and photographs have been published in the New Croton Review, Superpresent, Blink-Ink, and Penumbra. Cori has a forthcoming publication in under the gum tree. www.corimatusow.com.