parking lot & the cross atop
its roof shone into my eyes
& it felt like recognition of the blood
pressure of those guys who always said
bad things about holidays & pretty
women & I thought is it wrong to be wasted
away (some people will make you
think so) & my elbows were marked
with bruises like a bowl of pears
& my eyes were marked with sleep
deprivation like a bowl of black
plums & there’s always someone around
when you don’t want someone around
& there’s always someone on the corner
when you have nothing to give
& so when the neighbor’s shutters
peeled open I realized I was not
even clinically sad, just reacting to the world
as one should with one hand
on a cane built of broken creature,
memory of graves, memory.

Lisa Mottolo is the Founding Editor at Lit Fox Books and the Executive Editor at Austin Poetry Review. Lisa has attended writing programs at UC Berkeley and Kenyon College, and her work has appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Penn Review, Shō Poetry Journal, The Laurel Review, and others. Her debut poetry collection, How to Monetize Despair, was published by Unsolicited Press in 2023. She is currently working on her second poetry collection.

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