A Small Price & Without Warning

By MICHAEL ROBINS

The boy circles once more through the kitchen, past the ledge of photographs & the St. Francis tin, inside of which sleeps whatever’s left of the dog. My boy shows no signs of slowing down despite my tired oration on the topics of physics & premonitions, that denouement when I too was a spinning child & my head tripped down its irreversible path into the solid corner of the piano bench. No signs of slowing down nor do I mention how, playing ghost & turning beneath the sheet, I felt like a cannonball, I felt like nothing else speeding through darkness & then through the fog near the rocky shore. Afterwards, I knew only gravity, my blood, the irrefutable bleeding.

 

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Michael Robins is the author of five collections of poetry, most recently The Bright Invisible. He lives in Lake Charles, Louisiana, where he teaches in the MFA program at McNeese State University and serves as editor of The McNeese Review.

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A Small Price & Without Warning

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