My quarterly prompt-based art and literary magazine, Junk Drawer, published its first issue in June. The following poem is one of the three that appeared in the Summer 2018 issue.

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Knowing Now

didn’t know tragedy proper
only that it was why I’d keep

the tag on my Princess Di
Beanie Baby and wait to sell

it online, unloved, for fifty bucks
to a romantic overseas. why

I’d get sent home from school after
the collapse of towers I’d never

heard of full of people I’d never
heard of. had the wrong idea

about princesses. knowing now, they live
and die just once but can be borrowed back

broadcasted for the global anonymous
the rubber necks. the wrong idea

about wars. knowing now, they are only finite
for the men counting their winnings from the luxury boxes

…

tragedy proper isn’t as violent
or crazed as I imagined it would be

as a child when, in anticipation, I tripped
every breaker so loss would never

sneak up on me. cased the deep-dark
caverns and cathedrals so I knew how to navigate

my way out, bats and all. twenty years
older now, pen to page, the wringing out

of a mophead. obsessively pushing
dirt from one side of the kitchen

to the other, making believe I’m
doing something about my grief. what

kind of trophy do you get for not making
a scene, for calmly, quietly surviving

your real life and will someone buy it
on eBay years later for more than it’s worth?

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