A-Minor

by Elisabeth Adwin Edwards

wood strips wind-singing 
from the bed of a passing truck

could be mistaken for
mourning doves taking flight 

Rox-i-nol,
At-i-van

her “pathological emotionality”
laughing as I spill the commode-

bucket of her piss
shaking her fist as in turn all the lamps off

the i-Pad’s blue gleam ghosting 
her face 

as she watches BBC Earth 
in the dark

(do astrocytes exploding 
in the Milky Way 

of the mind
make sound? 

how can a sky be 
too filled with stars?)

long swallow of senna pill
buried in ice cream

the clicking 
of nail on glass 

as she hits each letter
DONT GO

my hug pressing 
the breath out of her chest

her bed’s Whisper Quiet
DC Motor lifting 

and lowering
cheeps of crepuscular finches

her dry weeping as in all week I 
dream of what you smell like

the oxygen-concentrator’s cycle
of lullaby wheeze

Elisabeth Adwin Edwards’s poems have appeared in Rogue Agent, SWWIM, Menacing Hedge, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, The American Journal of Poetry, River Heron, and other publications. Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net. A former regional theater actor, she lives in Los Angeles with her husband and daughter in an apartment filled with books.