Grace
Let go & let God is my witness father
salvation in his heaven & all’s
in the details bless my Bushmaster .223 rest
your soul nowhere in the green earth
helping those that help our troops
kill anyone who doesn’t believe Jesus
was calved from a virgin & then ascended
to his penthouse & will raptor down
to smite Jews abortionists niggers
Muslims fags Obama the Antichrist SATAN
WAS THE FIRST TO DEMAND EQUAL RIGHTS
outside the Knoxville Baptist Tabernacle
while a boy puts his tongue in another boy’s mouth
& they lie down together shy & barely breathing
To the Woman Crying Uncontrollably in the Next Stall
If you ever woke in your dress at 4am ever
closed your legs to a man you loved opened
them for one you didn’t moved against
a pillow in the dark stood miserably on a beach
seaweed clinging to your ankles paid
good money for a bad haircut backed away
from a mirror that wanted to kill you bled
into the back seat for lack of a tampon
if you swam across a river under rain sang
using a dildo for a microphone stayed up
to watch the moon eat the sun entire
ripped out the stitches in your heart
because why not if you think nothing &
no one can / listen I love you joy is coming
Winter Solstice
I can’t think about the black slick on the river or the deer
corpse at the base of the tree or how one lover is
too young & sometimes indifferent another is
lighting candles with someone else neither
ever mine for more than a rare evening the days will
lengthen now but so slowly it will still
feel like darkness is winning the battle between
it & what people call good or God a few fallen trees
are always there in the woods turning back
to earth rump torn open a kind of caul
over the eyes maybe a coyote black
shine on the river a lover’s hair lit fallen
trees lengthen now but so slowly I can’t think
indifferent base God between either darkness 
Kim Addonizio’s work in this issue is from The Night Could Go in Either Direction, a collaborative chapbook with Brittany Perham due in May 2016 from Slapering Hol Press. Addonizio is the author of seven poetry collections, two novels, two story collections, and two books on writing poetry: The Poet’s Companion (with Dorianne Laux) and Ordinary Genius. Her awards include two fellowships from the NEA, a Guggenheim, and two Pushcart Prizes. Two other books are forthcoming: a poetry collection, Mortal Trash (W.W. Norton) and a memoir, Bukowski in a Sundress: Confessions from a Writing Life (Penguin).
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