Haunted Passages:
Dane Slutzky
Registry
We got married before the disaster
and now, whenever something happens,
a package shows up on the doorstep.
When part of the continent crumbled away
into the sea, the UPS guy drove by
leaving three ceramic mixing bowls.
When the trees all caught the root disease,
passing it to each other through the fungi
in the earth, we got a toaster.
The sheet set (with extremely high thread count)
showed up minutes before the fire station
caught fire and just a week before
the statehouse declared independence
from the state. The table runner
came before the locusts. We aren’t sure
how the parcels are arriving
now that the roads have all crumbled
from the 10 days of hail and 3 days
of lightning, or how anyone is finding
our registry since the internet is down
after giant squid chewed away the underwater
cables and mutant eagles pulled down
all of the utility poles. The set of le creuset pots
(in caribbean blue, nectar yellow, french gray)
worked so perfectly, distributing the heat
so efficiently along the enameled
cast iron that they boiled water
even with the burner on low. But
that was before all of the utilities
stopped without a word, not a phone call,
not an email, and now we sit in the dark
hoping for no more packages, we don’t think
there’s anything else that we need.
Dane Slutzky’s poetry has recently appeared in Zócalo Public Square, LEON Literary Review, and Scoundrel Time. He received his MFA from Warren Wilson College and lives in western Massachusetts.
Image: morguefile.com
Check out HFR’s book catalog, publicity list, submission manager, and buy merch from our Spring store. Follow us on Instagram and YouTube.
Heavy Feather Review 