portion of the artwork for Emily O'Neill's poetry

Flung
Emily O’Neill

Hold it against your gums, some-
body else’s secret (my boyfriend gone

to LA    joints rolled on stranger’s butcher
block      naked in the yard with a jug of throat

burn) first wino wall kiss & scuttling
away from front door’s crack of light/I can mark

the season by what I smoked: that summer
they discontinued the old Camel blend. My favorite

for years. I went back to Marbs. Stranger drove two hours
from Yeardley seven nights strung together like cheap neon.

Brought old blend 99’s & we chain smoked on the curb lip
outside the 24-hour Dunkin Donuts, twitching. Quiet

addiction kind of boy—chapped knuckles in July, only
one tattoo. I wanted him the way skin opens

to savor the sun. Our last supper, I shook on my back
in the water company field, a sprinkler’s stuck arm.


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FRiGG: A Magazine of Fiction and Poetry | Issue 38 | Fall 2012