2 Poems by Dylan Freni

Reading With the Dead

Right before the happy ministry
sang its merry song upon the graveyard,
the prairie of Wright opened its pages,
quiet as a stillborn.

His haiku drenched itself in dysentery--
and among the dying sounds, I heard the soft words
float from the cemetery across the road.
Kneeling by the windowsill:
“blessed departed.”

How short three lines can seem
at once; and how fast they tend
to flash themselves like light
before an afternoon funeral.


The Shattering Force of Some

a quaked misstep may have led to her falling down
that day, miserable as her usual morning
commute.

“oh no” she might have said, or
“does this bother you--seeing me after all these years
like this?”

“do you care, anymore, that I might fall--actually
fall?”

this was the tatter of her dress, stray fabrics
purple and all, beating down the blades of grass
like a five-year old weed whacker,
while the slow mumble of her engine knees screamed behind.

for all of her “oh no’s” and her “falling down’s”
and for every time I seem to want to pick her up,
she dirties her streets again and again
always in the haunted myth of summer.

Bionote

Dylan Freni is a student and a writer living in Keene, New Hampshire. He is currently studying in the MFA program at the University of New Hampshire, and is the co-creator and poetry editor of The Squalor Review. His poetry has been featured in a number of online journals and blogs, and is forthcoming in print.