The Northville Review
an online literary journal
from The Meadow Covered in Water

Drew Kalbach

My name feels wrong in my head but right in your mouth.
You could be anybody:
half asleep on a train, drool extending from your jaw.
Our bodies jostle like baby alligators
swimming in a bucket.
I reach for my eyes and find televisions.
I reach for my knees and get tired.
You take a defensive posture.
There is gangrene.
In the distance someone comments on the distance.
Your shoulders grow broader every day.
Hands alone in a truck.

You take off your shirt and say
something statuesque.
I wish we were more willing to take long naked strolls.
All of our walls are covered in bleach.
If I weren’t so afraid of the meadow covered in water,
I’d sleep inside your chest.

* * * * *

FOR THE HATERS:

Poetry doesn’t have to be boring, poetry doesn’t have to have balls, poetry doesn’t have to have colors or fairies or clouds, poetry doesn’t have to have birds, poetry doesn’t have to have rhythm or rhyme or sense or image or abstraction. Poetry doesn’t have to be smart.

About the author

Drew Kalbach lives in Philadelphia. He is the author of the chapbook THE ZEN OF CHAINSAWS AND ENORMOUS CLIPPERS (Achilles Chapbook Series 2008) and of the e-chapbook THEATER (Scantily Clad Press 2009).