Listen to Justin Runge read his piece:
Who hasn’t thought
of the distance from
each window down,
of what scratched
the sill to its wood.
Some empty rooms
keep their curtains
as an only defense,
children enfolded,
greeting like ghosts.
Haze like the dead-
beat determined to
do right this time,
staying for weeks.
Tablets for sleep,
tablets for speech.
The daughter now
past the periphery
of any orphanage.
Mother was news.
Justin Runge lives in Lawrence, Kansas, where he serves as poetry editor of Parcel and helms Blue Hour Press. He is the author of two chapbooks, Take Our Picture as You Sleep (Gold Wake Press, 2012) and Plainsight (New Michigan Press, forthcoming). Poems of his have appeared in Linebreak, DIAGRAM, Harpur Palate, and elsewhere. He can be found at www.justinrunge.me.