elisa gabbert    kathleen rooney 




This is the way I want to remember
history, as we rewrote it.


                          *


It looked this way when we got here,
so we set it on fire.


                          *


Is there no help for the widow’s son?
I guess not.

                          *


Those water towers are full of
gold, I tell you, gold.


                          *

You are not the one
I meant to speed-dial.


                          *

Maybe babies are messengers
from Cupid: he is so ironic.


                          *

I would never say the F word
to a bird. But I would flip the bird.

                          *

I’ve stared at your face too long to be cool
but not long enough to get arrested.

                          *

A standing figure seen from below
looks like it’s standing on me.
 
                          *

The party isn’t over till
we haze the obstreperous.


                          *

An authentic dog is brought in
to shame the sell-out dogs.


                          *

Nothing can bring you down like
our solid gold parachutes.


                          *

If all you can say is “She’s very sweet,”
stop talking & lick her.


                          *

When you call the shower a watery grave,
you should lie down for more accuracy.


                          *

It was just like the score of a boring movie.
I was feeling cold, but expansive.


                          *

Inside the envelope, a tiny, beating heart.
It was literally as big as my face.


                          *

A boy & his dog. A girl & her metal detector.
Hey. I’m over here.


                          *

The children drowned in an inch of beer.
Who can compete with the dead?


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elisa gabbert holds degrees from Rice University and Emerson College. She currently lives in Boston. She is a reader for Ploughshares and poetry editor for Absent. Recent work appears or will appear in journals including LIT, No Tell Motel, Kulture Vulture, RealPoetik, H_NGM_N, Redivider, and Shampoo, as well as the forthcoming Outside Voices 2008 Anthology of Younger Poets. A chapbook, Thanks for Sending the Engine, is forthcoming from Kitchen Press.

kathleen rooney's  first book is Reading With Oprah (University of Arkansas, 2005). She is a founding editor of Rose Metal Press. Her poems have appeared recently in AGNI Online, Smartish Pace, and Crab Orchard Review. Her essay “Live Nude Girl” is forthcoming in Twentysomething Essays by Twentysomething Writers (Random House, 2006).

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