Issue 5, April 2008

My body presses
Like iron on wrinkled sheets-
Execution looms
Emily’s*
Portentous fly now
Buzzes at me
Languidly
Munching popcorn clouds-
Blue sky
I fall down like rain
Pooling under penal earth
From these depths, I rise
Retracing five steps
Trekking space my cell permits-
The final frontier.

*An allusion to Emily Dickinson’s poem, “I heard a fly buzz before I died.”