By Christina M. Rau
PROMPT—No one noticed ...
When the hammer misses the nail
it hits the wood and all bodies become
golddust drifting.
The automatic garage door stops working
sticking halfway. The car doesn’t notice.
The car brakes only after accelerating,
the roof peeled back, the car in two.
Bed corners round off. Bodies fall off edges
when rolling onto each other asleep or awake
and those bodies become silken webbing.
A steamboat lodges its hull in something
in the water. Something in the water dis-
integrates. The water runs dry.
Christina M. Rau’s latest collection How We Make Amends takes a poetic jaunt from the forest to the sea. Other publications include the poetry collections What We Do To Make Us Whole and the Elgin Award-winning Liberating The Astronauts, plus two other chapbooks. She moderates the Women's Poetry Listserv and has served as Poet in Residence for Oceanside Library (NY) since 2020. Her poetry airs on Destinies radio show (WUSB) and appears in various literary journals like fillingStation and The Disappointed Housewife, while her prose has appeared in Punk Monk Magazine and Reader’s Digest. When she's not writing, she's teaching yoga or watching the Game Show Network. She writes from Lynbrook, NY. Learn more on Christina's website.