Your memory is a pantry cleaned
of food, a shelf of peeled up
paper and two ants fighting for
the last stale crumb.
Your love was a tourniquet.
Your scent is fried chicken,
a hated summer job. You peeled
those work wears and picked lily
of the valley, lit candles, cooked
me food I’d never eaten –
scallops, imitation crab.
You wrote poems, I threw them away.
Your breath, a wisp in the humid
air. What is left of you scattered,
mingling with earth, a notion.
I probably never loved you.
Kendall A. Bell‘s poetry has been widely published in print and online, most recently in First Literary Review-East and Drown In My Own Fears. He was nominated for Sundress Publications’ Best of the Net collection in 2007, 2009, 2011, 2012 and 2013. He is the author of fifteen chapbooks. His most recent chapbook is “Be Mine”. He is the founder and co-editor of the online journal Chantarelle’s Notebook and the publisher/editor of Maverick Duck Press. His website is www.kendallabell.com and his chapbooks are available through www.maverickduckpress.com. He lives in Riverside, New Jersey.
Categories: Poetry
Tags: e-zine, ezine, hyperbole, Kendall A. Bell, longing, melancholy, melancholy hyperbole, memory, new, poem, poet, poetry, poets, submit, summer, Tourniquet, writing
Melancholy Hyperbole 
Such great visuals . . . the two ants fighting over the last breadcrumb, love as a tourniquet and I love that last stanza.
Thank you.