Middle-Aged Womanly Poem by Barbara Jean Liar 

As if  Ghost is mindful of stucco, 2nd floor gone (dead)² vanished  everything but  recall:  Poconos, the sound of boat wake, a river the color of loam, no gossamer, we should be famous, Mary,  by famous I mean identifiable  in a line up, where were you when the bodies went missing,  the day is perfect, sunny with low chance of family loss, like the roaming Ibis, its dirty shade of diaper, I hunger for grub, algae, wanting nothing more than to be alone.

*

For the laundromat on the corner of Potomac and Mulberry

What I remember is that you were always open loudly in your dirt shaming and your windows sworn in by fingerprints which should have been a foreshadow and then there was the street pharmacist (J from Philly who slammed the phone down against the “abortion”) and you with your payphone and cocaine the crack kind the gunfire between Starla and her boyfriend I forget his name her kitten whom I bought kitten food for after Doctor took Starla off life-support and you, laundromat, dark cavity teething through my poems I could go on about snow and boot prints  shuffling through memory and how the impressions still fit my shoe size I wonder if I come visit will you even remember my scars

King Tina is a poet living in the south. Her poems have appeared in Rattle, Tin House, Up the Staircase Quarterly, and elsewhere. 

A Song for King