Two Poems | Alison Matthews
POETRY
8/2/20261 min read
See Fox Run
Freely through crowded
Residential areas, see him breathe the
Smokey air, see him chew
Cigarette butts and vape
Cartridges, see him thrive amongst
Dumpsters and stray
Dogs who limp and lean
Against parked cars, see him
Spring for the scraps left
Behind by the neighborhood
Butcher.
He whimpers outside the slaughterhouse,
Paws on the window, his nose
Fogging the glass.
Petal on a Landmine
If America
lost its military
just for one day
Would the bullets
be melted down
into the metal things
on the ends of pencils?
Would a wrench meant
for making bombs
instead be used by a plumber
to fix his neighbor's sink?
Would the soldiers
greasing the joints
that slam Empire’s fist
serve as umpires
in neighborhood ball games?
Soon it’d be back to
the bleeding,
the screaming,
the whys.
But just this once,
this petal on a landmine,
there’d be a mother left alive
to teach her son,
at a gently lit table,
how one minus one equals
zero.
Alison Matthews is an author of poetry, drama, and fiction.