The Dinner Bells                                                                                                —Kasandra Larsen


The sound of a baby wailing sails
over the neighbor’s half-dead apple tree
and the top two buttons on my blouse
have come undone, as if to push
a breast toward that open mouth. The cat
notices my attention elsewhere, glances
toward the window, opens her own mouth
silently, this gesture guaranteed
to make me fill her bowl. Night’s
creeping over the horizon, dragging
hunger behind it in the form
of an ambulance, red lights flashing,
keening for a body to be slipped inside.

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Kasandra Larsen’s work has appeared in Best New Poets 2012, Burningword Literary Journal, and Into the Void, among others. A finalist for the 2016 Four Way Books Intro Prize in Poetry, and a semifinalist for the 2017 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award, her first full-length book of poetry continues to evolve. Her chapbook, STELLAR TELEGRAM, won the 2009 Sheltering Pines Press Chapbook Award. She is a three-time Pushcart nominee.

ISSN 2472-338X
© 2018