A Frantic Turning Around
The absence of love must be like a frantic turn-around.
–Bernadette Mayer
Don’t let anyone tell you you are less than scared.
That’s how you really feel. I was going to die young
but now I’ll have to wait for you, honey, was a line
I heard yesterday on the radio and thought it was a line
listeners in the 18 to 25 range would go nuts for. That explains it.
The fear I’ll never write a nice line to fall in love to
usually keeps me up at night, it’s bats in the attic
becoming bats in the den. I smacked a manila
envelope over an open air vent, and caulked the gaps
around the wiring piped through the wall. Each opening
is a vulnerability, bats being small until they spread
in jagged shapes their wings. If one sneaks inside
and opens into a hot flapping mass in your home
it makes a sound you fear a long time after.
Tanner Pruitt is originally from Macon, Georgia, and is an MFA candidate at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His poems have recently been published in the Greensboro Review, Minnesota Review, and Permafrost, among others.