Category Archives: Pith

god talk in the coffee shop

two earnest
young women sit
at a table across

from each other, drinking coffee,
gazing—dreamy, happy-eyed—
into one another’s faces.

with goon smiles, they
talk of men
and dating and god’s

unconditional love,
how, in the midst
of all the confusions,

despite all the wrong choices,
god still loves us. their
earnest desire to please

god, to check on each
other through probing
questions — “how are you,

really?” — to pray
through their young-woman
hardships fills the coffee shop

like coffee beans
spilling on
a hard floor.

—Stacey Warde

Stasis

We are monsters now, fangs dripping
with the blood of our victims, the rent

flesh of our children & parents in gluey
attachment to our sinewed talons.

We breathe fire & excrete carrion.
We cannibalize our own refuse,

sodomize uncomfortable thought.
Now is the time for horror, while

ideas such as kindness & comfort,
hope & creation are not even

disdained, merely left aside,
moldering beside the empty road.

—Todd Young

The King

PITH.Elvis_Presley_promoting_Jailhouse_RockHe wasn’t supposed to move
but couldn’t hold still
and I felt like that,
so when he sang I listened.

“Sit still,” my parents said;
“Take your seat,” the school insisted,
until I felt like a tree in a storm
struggling to free itself.

But the King understood,
though when he was drafted
and the Army cut his hair
Pat Boone fell out.

The world’s changed now; it had to.
“Nothing stands still for long,”
I was told but wouldn’t listen.
“Sit still,” my parents said.

—Nicholas Campbell

How beautiful it is

She abused me
for good and bad

and I hurt
her more than she

hurt me.

It’s such an intimate
thing to be taken

that way
to let someone else

have control

until it hurts
so much

you cry out
stop! or harder

please!

until you lose
your mind

swimming in the pain
thinking how beautiful it is.

 —Stacey Warde