ISSUE 9

Andreea Ceplinschi

 

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Edward Hopper Never Painted Opioids and Suicide

 

but a Cape Cod where the neighbors know      each-other

and never lock their doors

 

the only watchers – pigeons perched on higher power lines

above sinners’ bodies     slow-motion pushing through early ocean fog

 

here, everybody belongs

 

and violence is soundless and lonely, stealthing

through window screens           like salt air into another bedroom crime scene

 

into another sinner’s body through their parchment-bloodless skin

 

and morning dawns like an act of violence

with the lit-up sky bruised and bleeding

 

                             flies crawling over milky retinas

 

with phones rising up for sunrise pictures but nobody ever there

to call for help when the plunger pushes down at 3AM

 

here, the neighbors

 

bring out their recycling and wave        and wave back

the surf peacefully churning cerulean

the color of lips covered in spittle foam clouds

when the neighbors find them

when their mothers find them                how their mothers find them

 

here, the sunrise is always forgiving, shaded in lilac and low tide

sweet as spent bathwater, picture-perfect

for Facebook, where neighbors post their condolences

 

seagulls always floating in the distance

                                                                          screaming like mothers

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