AMY PENCE

Mourning Dove

Too heavy for the feeder,
it pecks at the squirrel’s
spent seeds.

No, this isn’t
a nature poem, or
how the bird’s

call reminds me
of my Grandma Doe’s
home in Ohio.

If I were a certain
professor poet, I’d
recall that bar

in Philly and perch
on a memory like
I was told, waiting

for Beau or Buster
or Brad to grab
a beer and bawl—

But no, everything
you’ve been taught
about poetry

is false. Our mourning
is inglorious, our
constitutions weak.

Among the scabrous
weeds, the dove
has nothing to give me

or represent, its
material shudder and
half-flight as

illusory as the grit
it eats to break
down seeds.

The Hallelujahs light-
splotched and shuttered
by the figments

of loss. 

Unsalvageable + Scented

Blue wax cubes
leftover, it appears
from a previous life.

Before my disaster,
three shootings, a contagion—
before the dream

life. Housed in plastic
as everything houses
in plastic:  sandwiches

tampons, me
in a cubicle.  3-D printers
shitting out all

the facsimiles. Cubes 
a mix of musk,
cedar, a touch of

mystery. I’m
reminded of a man
overwrought

with cologne. I’m reminded
of humankind. Who
said we were kind?

Reality has the audacity
to be breakable. Looks
like I melted one

cube of Illusion
before my house
came down. Reeks

like nothing broken
into shapes of
nothing. One

doorknob’s turn
from death—huffing
on wonder.

Amy Pence authored two books of poetry along with the hybrid book [It] Incandescent (Ninebark Press). Her second chapbook, Your Posthumous Dress: Remnants from the Alexander McQueen Collection, was released in 2019 from dancing girl press. Recent poems appear in Hotel Amerika, Green Mountains Review Online, and Pleiades. She's taught poetry writing at Emory University and works as a freelance tutor in Atlanta.