Emily Rosko

Shard & Smoke

In those fossilized days, the clouds were invited in. The purple drag of them
pressurized the living room with gloom. Light of the television the one beacon.
We razored all tenderness against scripted words. You’d go through the house
raiding the shelves, knocking everything off their seats. No, you were like some
large mammal after a hornet sting. Brain that warned fire, skin flaring with
ancient angers no one can reach or fathom. My tongue cut short, metallic with
blood. A thick coating to numb the shards. Later, you at the stove, turning the
faulty burner; me turning stone.

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Emily Rosko is the author of two award-winning poetry collections, Prop Rockery (University of Akron Press, 2012) and Raw Goods Inventory (University of Iowa Press, 2006). Additionally, she is the editor of A Broken Thing: Poets on the Line (University of Iowa Press, 2011). Her poems have been published in AGNI, Antioch Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Denver Quarterly, Laurel Review, New Orleans Review and Pleiades, among others. She earned a MFA at Cornell and PhD in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Missouri. She is associate professor of English at the College of Charleston and the poetry editor for Crazyhorse.