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Poetry for Issue 6

No One is Martyring Anyone – Lauren Gordon

Every town has a witch
living at the top of a hill
in a run-down house
and none of the neighborhood boys
will mow her lawn,
not even for ninety dollars,
because her eyes are milky
and she smells like vinegar;
a side-effect from cracking open the thighs
of babies and sucking out the marrow
in order to keep living
in that run-down house
on top of the hill.

Once, a mile-wide hole in Iowa was discovered
and the excavation employed one hundred
female archaeologists who revealed
an unfathomable history of missing children;
milk-carton girls who were never seen
again; they just piled into the hole
to become salt, so low in the dirt.
A fingerprint of a breeze
ruffled the prairie grass
around the hole and people said
that was ascension.

You can find most things
in the same place you left them.
A witch finds her newt eyeballs
in the cupboard next to the Ritz Crackers.
A little girl finds her twin in Iowa.
I found a statue of Joseph
buried in the front yard.
He was upside down,
which made sense.

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