Daycare
By Austin Thornton

The first time you passed a door here
they bore it past you to a long black car,
hinge dangled by the meager point of entry
to a fist; dry old maple, cracked
like ribs until the veins
spread, pumping sweat
again. She’s still a girl, sitting still,
not hearing the AC, the routine
repeating like a train car in her head,
her scissors opening a yarn ball like a knotted
hand. A boy escapes
through the back door, struggles to a kneeling
on his unkempt knees, pinches
through the bluegrass like a passerine,
and you have to follow, mimic.
There’s a tree,
branches a plum-red brocade,
a track of chairs ovaling an empty table.
You don’t see him hide
the gravel in his ear.

 

How I Want to Write

with a line from Nilüfer Yanya

it’s the desire to be closer, closer
like a feather in your ribcage.
it’s a hemiplegia, a paralysis of tongue;
it’s screaming at the moon for
keeping me from you, desire,
but it’s also quiet: black sheep grazing
in the south of france.
i desire to be closer, closer than my hate
for everything between
us. i find it overbearing, i think it’s frustrating,
a simple thing to lose the lyrics of it,
feel them drifting on a foggy, sunset lake.
it’s like desire for
if we were there, how you would wrap me
in a bed or in a rope.
it’s desire and starry skies.
i feel i could unwrap
my ear and lend it to you, patterned
like a painter’s palette; desire, closer,
sometimes our schedules don’t align;
i leave your messages, desiring,
so i can read them first thing in the morning

 

Austin Thornton from US is a diviner of refined sentimentalism, a modern metaphysical, a possible human. He has won of several scholarships as well as Oregon State University’s 2023 WIC Award and 2025 Provost Prize. Poetry, nonfiction, and fiction from this author is featured or forthcoming in The Solitude Diaries, PRISM Magazine, The Daily Barometer, and *82 Review. A novel is in progress, but more short stories and poems will be procrastinated with.