Read More: A brief Q&A with Adam Houle
In Service
Bless this moment before the hydraulic door
sighs open. Bless the tamped heel-click
on the low-knap carpet. Bless the medicine
cart its quiet wheels. Bless how it feels
to watch your face attenuate as the glass
levers inward. Bless its disappearance
and the hall that takes its place. Bless this:
mylar balloons taped to temporary name plates
along the corridor. Bless late comforts. Bless night
nurses ending another shift. Bless their laughter.
Confessio Inimicus
Fairy-winged brightly green thing,
I’m sorry it’s come to a thumb
rolled over you, crushing
your armor-clad organs
beneath my one-offed ridges,
and as I snuff you out I think
of the tired cop who blotted
in order each of my fingers, […]
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A Paper Hive Earns No Quarter
It’s hell, I think, to see them flit that way
at dusk back to us, swarming our willow
where, limb-perched, they flex in shadows. You pray
they quit us; I pump the poisoned bellows.
Love, things can grow too large for us to love, […]
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Adam Houle is the author of Stray (Lithic Press 2017), a finalist for the Colorado Book Award. His poems have appeared in AGNI, Shenandoah, Baltimore Review, and elsewhere. He currently lives in South Carolina, where he is an assistant professor of English at Francis Marion University.
“A Paper Hive Earns No Quarter” and “Confessio Inimicus” both originally appeared in AGNI. “In Service” appeared in Chattahoochee Review.
Read More: A brief Q&A with Adam Houle