Reliability by Michelle Reale

The crucifix on the pale wall will cast a shadow that dances. The fruit in the bowl will age with grace. The black thread and needle will find their rhythm. The pills in the old-fashioned coffee saucer will find the right mouth. The foot in the shoe will clench like a claw. The mottled and misshapen eyes will twitch. The seer on the television will predict and we will blindly believe and follow. The old man two houses down will heave himself onto the ambulance gurney. He will not return. The fragile heads of flowers will droop dejectedly on their stems. The days will grow impatient and exhausted. The night will have us toss and turn with eyes wide open. Birds will fold themselves into their iridescent wings. Dinner will burn in the pot. Mothers with great anxiety will pace wooden floors with wailing infants while their partners will grind their teeth into dust. Piebald dogs and wolves bearing grudges will whine with resignation and loneliness. The evening news will drone yet paralyze us with fear. Spots will appear on the hand that trembles. The weather will have its way with us. We will verify unintelligible words for those who need it. We will stigmatize those within the domestic sphere appropriately. The weather will have its way with us. We will forget what it is we ever wanted to say. We will make room for what we no longer need but still want. We will peek over the high walls from the place we carelessly and begrudgingly call home.



Michelle Reale is the author of several poetry collections, including Season of Subtraction (Bordighera Press, 2019) and Blood Memory (Idea Press), and from Alien Buddha Press is her prose poem collection, In the Year of Hurricane Agnes. She is the Founding and Managing Editor for both OVUNQUE SIAMO: New Italian-American Writing and The Red Fern Review.