Too Close Behind You

Ellen Bass

I think many people love poetry who don’t know they love it. People are sometimes afraid of poetry, or they’ve been introduced to poetry that doesn’t speak to them.

Ellen Bass

Eating The Bones

by Ellen Bass

The women in my family
strip the succulent
flesh from broiled chicken,
scrape the drumstick clean;
bite off the cartilage chew the gristle,
crush the porous swellings
at the ends of each slender baton.
With strong molars
they split the tibia, sucking out
the dense marrow.
They use up love, they swallow
every dark grain,
so at the end there’s nothing left,
a scant pile of splinters
on the empty white plate.

Hooves on Gravel, Like Teeth on Bones

Katherine Quevedo

Another dead end for you
deep, so deep in the Minotaur’s lair.
Hooves on gravel, like teeth on bones,
grind away their distance behind you.

Deep, so deep in the Minotaur’s lair,
shadows creep and stretch and
grind away their distance behind you.
You hear that impossible sound.

Shadows creep and stretch, and
around the next corner,
you hear that impossible sound
too close behind you, gaining, gaining.

Around the next corner,
another dead end for you.
Too close behind you, gaining, gaining:
hooves on gravel, like teeth on bones.