Two Poems
by Laura Passin
Midnight: Watching Planet Earth
The polar vortex grabs Chicago by the feet.
This time next year, my mother will be dead.
The icicle on the kitchen window flexes its single blue-white muscle.
Lion fight so hi-def I can smell the blood.
I fiddle with the remote, rewind the planet, spin it again.
The icicle tests the air, finds my scent.
The radiator roars awake, shakes its mane of steam.
Cultural Literacy: Verisimilitude
I used to hate
horror movies:
all that blood,
the shimmering gore.
Now I look at the world
we’ve made and think:
bring it. Let the bodies
hit the floor.
Laura Passin is the Pushcart-winning author of We the Destroyers and Borrowing Your Body and the chapbook All Sex and No Story. Laura earned her PhD in English Literature at Northwestern and her MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Oregon. Her writing has appeared in a wide range of publications, including Prairie Schooner, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, The Toast, Electric Literature, and Best New Poets, and has been nominated for the Best of the Net. Laura lives in Denver with too many pets. Her favorite pizza toppings are mushroom and onion.
Forget Cool 