Issue 20 | Fall 2018

No Pet Names Because You Know Who You Are

You slammed
the door in my face why
did you slam you can’t
make me I don’t feel
a thing but I feel
when you say like a door slammed
every time I see
light spill across your chest
and the world behind your
unmovable mirror your
table of memory placed by the ministry
of meaning every time you
in a photo snapped
as the door let me tell you
slammed you lack the energy
for what I’m about to
the floor is the best place
to lie while the ceiling crushes
I pile it on me since you
have not moved every time it might be
locked every time you slam and I reach
behind to turn the I delay doorknob
to say what it is I edit myself
but want you (you know who you are)
to know there is something you should
care to know so I come
ashore on a mainland
of you because I am
an island slammed
and my caves are now dry
tubes where lava once
flowed but you have not
in a long time and the door
that only one time or maybe a few
was ever unlocked and you know
who you have reduced
to cliché

Filed under: Poetry

Anthony DiPietro is a Rhode Island native who has traveled to all of the lower forty-eight states. A Boston-based museum administrator who recently earned his MFA from Stony Brook University, his poems and essays appear in numerous journals. His website AnthonyWriter.com features more of his writing and videos of readings.