The 2River View 17.4 (Summer 2013)
spacer
spacer

Megan Volpert

We all fight

I think it would be cool to own a switchblade. But that means carrying it around and then that means using it, which seems like no fun. I'm not a violent person. Go ahead and throw me under the bus though, because I can lift it with my tongue. No kid ever bullied me in school. For years, I didn't understand it was because of my smart mouth. I didn't even know I had one until my father put soap in it. All people are strong and most don't know what their strengths are. The life is perfectly salvageable. It's just the person is not yet interested to be saved.

We see something terrible and bloom

Look at the sky, so you know what the emergency is. Fires happen at night. Floods happen during the day. Every natural disaster wants to perform when it can be best seen. There is this special type of black mold that only grows where there has been a flood. It's toxic. But there is also a mushroom, a black morel, which only grows where there has been a fire. It's delicious. The event is not really the thing, just a seed. In museums, I probably spend sixty percent of the time looking at people looking, and just forty percent looking at what they're looking at.

Megan Volpert is the author of four books on communication and popular culture, most notably about Andy Warhol. She has been teaching high school English in Atlanta for the better part of a decade. The poems printed here are forthcoming in Only Ride (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2014). contact