Shannon Frost Greenstein
Purple
after Mary Ruefle's "Red"
After comes the
bittersweet remorse, viscous regret at the corners of your eyes
while you convince yourself
you’d be fine on your own.
After comes the
fallout, the wounds of the shrapnel of the voices of
anger that echoed under the clearing sky
as you clean the chickens.
After comes the
mud; the sticky, relentless, suffocating, futile
backdrop to every experience
the longer it rains.
After comes the
sadness, an ache, a blade through the xyphoid process
when you remember the early 2000s
and falling in love.
After comes the
damage control, frantic steps of triage by wartime medics
because your great-grandmother’s china
is broken on the floor.
After comes the
rainbow, a prism of color and metaphor
you will not see because
everything is still mostly red.
After comes the
bittersweet remorse, viscous regret at the corners of your eyes
while you convince yourself
you’d be fine on your own.
After comes the
fallout, the wounds of the shrapnel of the voices of
anger that echoed under the clearing sky
as you clean the chickens.
After comes the
mud; the sticky, relentless, suffocating, futile
backdrop to every experience
the longer it rains.
After comes the
sadness, an ache, a blade through the xyphoid process
when you remember the early 2000s
and falling in love.
After comes the
damage control, frantic steps of triage by wartime medics
because your great-grandmother’s china
is broken on the floor.
After comes the
rainbow, a prism of color and metaphor
you will not see because
everything is still mostly red.
Biography
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Shannon Frost Greenstein (she/her) resides in Philadelphia with her children, soulmate, and cats. She is the author of “Pray for Us Sinners,” a collection of fiction from Alien Buddha Press, and “More.”, a poetry collection by Wild Pressed Books. Shannon is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, a Contributing Editor for Barren Magazine, and a former Ph.D. candidate in Continental Philosophy. Her work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Pithead Chapel, X-R-A-Y Lit Mag, Cabinet of Heed, trampset, and elsewhere. Follow Shannon at shannonfrostgreenstein.com or on Twitter at @ShannonFrostGre.
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