Monday Afternoon
by Jenn Brown


No one talks about it. Without mythology,
just a few hours of no particular color, no certain
unmistakable angle of paned light on the floor.
I climb up from the bog of a late nap, and this
could be any day at all. I might've slept centuries
and wakened unchanged. The cars below honk
their horns and drive on, as though they know

this is no time for stopping. A child in the daycare's
fenced yard screams bloody murder because something
in her wants saying, and that thing she releases is furious
hunger, the afternoon air cracked open like disaster,
jagged and red. Monday, you are a latex glove peeled
from a hand and dropped, the fingertips still
dimpled inward--you shield me from nothing.







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