Soap by Karin Gottshall

Soap

by Karin Gottshall

(published in Juked, 2013)

It is full bitter winter when I begin

to bleed. Too ashamed to tell. Aligning myself

with the crows I take the back way home.

Pages of book reports blown down the hill.

What constitutes anger is passion plus a disappointment

of hopes. Bad math. The body plus the smell

of burning. The Pine-Sol ghost of the school hall

and early mornings I can’t wake up. The fluorescent

bulb was invented for us, and the closed window.

Moths hatching from the o...