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Excerpt from an interview conducted on the Soft Serve Podcast. Thanks to Jen & Brad Turner. Visit them here: www.softservepodcast.com

lyrics

QUILLS


Today a man pressed a pillow
over his 7-month-old son’s face,
then strangled the baby’s mother
(who was also his 16-year-old daughter).
He called his mother, confessed,
then drove out into the woods
and shot himself in the cab of his pickup.

A porcupine waddles through a field
not far from my house. I’ve never fired
a round at anything not glass or tin,
but the summer after my mother loaded
me on a plane to go live with my father,
I spent nailing earthworms to 2x4s
leaned along the backyard fence.

Thwacks echoed off the shed
as morning haze ghosted
through surrounding pines. The worms
writhed as I pierced their skin—
blood and shit smeared the boards.
The crucified bodies dried and curled
under the sun my parents both shared.

The pain we receive, the little it takes
to give it tenfold. I won’t measure evil
out of units of illness and despair,
but while the porcupine munches
on clover, I’ll rest on a stone wall,
allow the sun to burn my neck red,
my hands finally at peace in my lap.

credits

from All This Living: Selected Recorded Poems, released February 26, 2023

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Joshua Michael Stewart Massachusetts

Joshua Michael Stewart is a poet and musician living in Western Massachusetts.

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