Mickie Kennedy

Shoving Newspapers into My Shoes

I grew up afraid
of photographs, the shudder
of lens and shutter—antelopes
caught in the glass at the zoo.

*

I lost a name
on the side of a mountain,
snagged like a plastic grocery bag
in a stand of bamboo.

*

Like a drunk relative, rain
shows up uninvited. Like an orange tabby,
I arch my back when touched.

*

In the fourth grade, I was crushing
on a boy, so I stole
his math book and threw it over the fence.
Months later, I found it
swollen, rain-buckled,
numbers fading from the pages. 

________________________________________________________________________________________

Mickie Kennedy (he/him) is a gay writer who resides in Baltimore County, Maryland with his family and a shy cat that lives under his son's bed. A Pushcart Prize nominee, his work has appeared or is forthcoming in Threepenny Review, The Southern Review, Colorado Review, Gulf Coast, Nimrod, Copper Nickel and elsewhere. A finalist for the 2023 Pablo Neruda Prize, he earned an MFA from George Mason University.