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poetry
The Irises
Abby Paige
At attention on the table, irises
hold tablets of sulphur on their tongues. We’ve eaten
the bread out of the kitchen and the eggs
have all been cracked, the little bowls of their shells
filled with garbage. Maybe it’s true, somewhere
there are still thunderstorms, and maybe there will be
other summers for drowning. No one hears me say
every wall in this house is pimpled with tumors.
No one hears me say I know the sky is not falling.
It is lowering itself slowly down on top of us.
Abby Paige is a poet, playwright and performer whose poems have appeared in Hunger Mountain Review, MARGIE, and are forthcoming in Saranac Review. Her solo show, Piecework: When We Were French, toured this spring throughout Vermont, where she was born and raised. She now lives in Montreal, where she is a regular poetry reviewer for The Rover.