Steam rises from a hot dish — either an angel or nothing.
Poem by Charlie Brice
Art by Charlie Cole
A Metonymy of Desolation
With a nod towards Rilke
Steam rises from a hot dish—
either an angel or nothing.
What does the bottom of a grave
have to offer?
Fill an empty urn with ashes;
what story does it tell?
A cello locked in a closet
unable to sing.
What of a stretch of concrete
absent footfalls?
Half a sandwich rests in a fridge,
awaits fingers long gone.
An indentation in a mattress
cradles futility.
No one wiped the child’s fingerprints
from the windowpane.
The bell tolls; who is there
to hear it?
An empty chair.
A pen on a barren desk.
Paper that’s blank
Paper that’s blank
About the Author
Charlie Brice won the 2020 Field Guide Poetry Magazine Poetry Contest and placed third in the 2021 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Prize. His sixth full-length poetry collection is Pinnacles of Hope (Impspired Books, 2022). His poetry has been nominated three times for both the Best of Net Anthology and the Pushcart Prize and has appeared in Atlanta Review, The Honest Ulsterman, Ibbetson Street, The Paterson Literary Review, Impspired Magazine, Salamander Ink Magazine, and elsewhere.
About the Artist
Charlie Cole is the product of a town no one has ever heard of which, of course, means she gravitated toward creating stories to match her dreams of escape. When she is not writing she can be found vomiting out pop culture diatribes and trying to make friends with the bats in the belfry of her mind. Proud advocate for mental health, queer identity, and neurodivergency.
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