Samuel Dickison

My wife raises children in a house Full of knives and fire. Electricity slithers through the walls. Outside, stars fall like trees. I warn her about this, But she does not hear me.

I start on the coffee table with a sledge hammer Turning it to splinters big as porcupine quills. I dismantle all the blankets thread by thread, Unravelling back and forth like a dog

The busy thrift store ladies shuffle here and there between the stacks of clothes, folding, talking, slowly creasing pants that smell like cigarettes and skirts; hands inked in blue veins, mottled arms and