How to Avoid Disaster
Don’t smoke while filling the gas tank,
or drop the hairdryer in your sudsy bathwater.
Don’t sing radio songs while shaving your legs.
Don’t sabotage the grocery checkout,
with your forlorn credit score. Even so,
the pain finds you, not in a banner way,
like touching outlets with wet hands,
but when you’re at a traffic light and no one
is watching the stage craft, the way the stereo speakers
weep from your eyes. Don’t make a kale salad
with an ex-lover. Don’t check social media 100 times
an hour. Don’t interrupt your plentiful addictions
with sorrowful afflictions. Don’t push that rock up
the dusty road. Don’t light the oven with your head in it.
Don’t haunt your own mailbox with willful yearning
for a missive with a mustard stain. Don’t be woken by
a one-eyed dog. Listen to the sound of clothes
comforting you in the dryer, asking for nothing back.
Put the house key under the planter, so you can
burglarize your beautiful inner debacle of selves.
Lost and Found
This poem was plucked
from the lost and found—
of my third-grade coat room.
The red mittens yarned a hole
in the thumb—Frigid cold air
to find the gasp of the living.
This poem grapples with
the daily mosaic of patterns—
seasons, siblings, bills.
This poem wants Art
for art’s sake. Wants to
scream from the top
of a building, because
we can only fake it for so long.
This poem notices every
empty seat in diners across
lonely small towns.
This poem is the found
remorse of a feted loved one.
The ghost that wears my mittens.
It knows lament, like the back
of its hand. Determined to dial up
the soul’s staircase to grief—
making notes to thy self.
Once, upon a time, this poem kissed
a furor–got driven away in a black Sedan.
Cynthia Atkins (She, Her), originally from Chicago, IL, is the author of Psyche’s Weathers, In the Event of Full Disclosure, and Still-Life With God, and Duets, a collaborative chapbook from Harbor Editions. Her work has appeared in many journals, including Alaska Quarterly Review, BOMB, Cider Press Review, Diode, Cimarron Review, Indianapolis Review, Lily Poetry Review, Los Angeles Review, Rust + Moth, North American Review, Permafrost, Plume, Seneca Review, and Verse Daily. She earned her MFA from Columbia University and teaches at Blue Ridge Community College. Atkins has earned fellowships and prizes from Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, SWWIM Residency at The Betsy Hotel Writer’s Room, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, The Writer’s Voice, and Writers at Work. Atkins lives on the Maury River of Rockbridge County, Virginia, with artist Phillip Welch and their family. More work and info at: www.cynthiaatkins.com