after Mary Ruefle
ANGER AS STONE What do I do with all this resentment thrown like a stone into the lake of my body? It’s too deep to fish out and I don’t have the heart to drain the whole body of water looking for one smooth and poisonous pit.
ANGER AS CAVE SALAMANDER It writhes in my grip, cold and slick. It has long since lost the ability to see, a result of its ecosystem of darkness. Still, it remains restless and hungry, hungry for something, anything, to eat.
ANGER AS OLD MANOR ON THE HILL No one lives there anymore, hasn’t for a long time. Everyone jokes that it’s haunted. Of course, it isn’t. It isn’t anything anymore, hardly even a house. Just a hollow monument of something once lived in, a place the wind conspires its howls.
ANGER AS SUMMER
An unrelenting season.
ANGER AS LETTER so thick with bitterness, the ink never dries, only bubbles, only runs and smears and stains everything it touches. Hold it upright and it’ll weep, a black lake pooling in your lap.
Jonny Teklit is a winner of the 2019 Academy of American Poets College Poetry Prize as well as the recipient of the 2019 Aliki Perroti and Seth Young Most Promising Young Poet Award. Currently a reader for The Adroit Journal, his work has appeared in Lancaster Online and The New Yorker.
