Pickle
Across the sands of Normandy
the dead dive silver hands
into crisp summer baskets
We wave to them
They busy themselves
with small sandwiches
When we call to them
they smooth thin cotton
napkins over torn legs
snap checkered picnic blankets
over splintered beach
rest their eyes on the sea
swallow
Home in Time
Small troll scurry back
to your lousy apartment
Hungry for dinner kids conquer
a fear of starving
with collective gnashing
Imagine them as adolescents
equipped with lances Here
is your locked door Here
the shiny slim buttons dart along
the counter Smash them
under your open palm Home
is any place you to return to This one
sandwiched between O
sobbing drunk grandmothers
crooning Beatles songs
TV on wrack these walls Railing
against grown progeny Ugly cry
No meme for levity As if
this tenement the collapsed
scales of its futile red armor slunk
about us fatally wounded beast of
what we refused
to believe The knight closing in
Jess Feldman’s poetry has appeared in Sixth Finch, Reality Beach, Paperbag and elsewhere. Her manuscript “Call It a Premonition” was chosen by Zachary Schomburg as winner of the 2015 BOAAT Winter Chapbook Competition. Jess currently lives in Brooklyn, NY.