JoAnna Novak

In Your Hands

 

 

Friday: I ride the

elevator up

 

to see

you, common

 

bird, allocated

to thundersnow

 

and wet

mornings. I want

 

my silence;

flight, her

 

solitaire court,

her airlifted

 

moving panties

high-lo

 

skirts, covers

down. Brass,

 

I chew up

and swallows.

Playing House

 

 

You, with the bully

coat, and you, chewing

big black shoes, my soft

black stockings, any hap-

hazard hope. Scents of

sweet squirrel, slurpy

yam, interstate rainwater

bowls. Sounds of

calm down, disposal

hum and canyon hearts.

Can’t we pant together?

Can’t I call this enough?

biography

JoAnna Novak

JOANNA NOVAK is the Pushcart-Prize-nominated author of two chapbooks: Laps (Another New Calligraphy, 2014) and Something Real (dancing girl press, 2011). Her poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Guernica, the Los Angeles Review, eleven eleven, Hobart, Illuminati Girl Gang, and Petri Press. With Thomas Cook and Tyler Flynn Dorholt, she edits Tammy. She lives in Massachusetts, where she is working on a memoir.