By Jennie Malboeuf

We step off the curb into

glass diamonds. Confetti

cuts our feet; the drunks

mistake the street

for a trash bin and we crunch

more lotto tickets than leaves.

Where can we move to?

we take turns asking one

another. There isn’t a night

lately that we don’t hear I don’t

give a fuck screamed two houses

down. And every neighbor

is old or killing themselves.

We’ve done our time you say.

Most often I agree — until

I catch glimpse of the fresh

white paint on the beadboard

of the porch ceiling.

Or I remember we stood still

and watched three foxes

wander softly from the schoolyard

a few weeks back.


Jennie Malboeuf is a native of Kentucky. Her work is forthcoming in Poet Lore, the Potomac Review, The Cortland Review, and Unsplendid, is currently featured on The Pinch, and has been published in the Southeast ReviewMid-American ReviewMississippi Review, and Columbia Poetry Review. She was recently awarded a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Award, was a finalist for the Arts & Letters Rumi Prize, the Akron Poetry Prize, the Iowa Review Prize, and was shortlisted by the Missouri Review Editors’ Prizes. She lives in North Carolina and teaches writing at Guilford College.

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