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Rachel Mennies

September 10, 2016


​In one version of the story, I find you by way of several minor accidents.

There was a girl in high school who would tell us look for the guys who drive stick.

It means they know what they’re doing.

Ask them for a ride, she’d say. Make them show you.

That winter two boys nearly died speeding down the town’s back roads.

That winter I bent over a boy in his borrowed car.

His became the first body I studied besides my own.

Alone after I would reach for the electric toothbrush, the wooden spoon, and search for the places
he lit for a moment, then darkened.

I thought myself the only animal in a frozen city full of men, but I was wrong.

I thought I’d starve, but I was wrong.



October 21, 2016


I spent last night in the kitchen sharpening knives.

They’re the only weapons I keep in my home.

Using them once brought me comfort, Naomi.

The steel and palm rocking over the stalks, dividing carrot from top.

Last year, there was another night I spent alone in the kitchen.

I intuited my way around each dark shape.

I reached for the heaviest knife first: the one I use to cleave the chicken’s back, the onion’s skull.

Thief! writes Sexton when she hears of Plath’s suicide.

What did you stand by, just how did you lie down into?

(Like her I longed for night’s recipe.

The way my mother wrote in the margins you learn where to find the roaster’s spine first by touch.)

I lifted the steel just for a moment.

I felt my hand returning it to the block unworked.

My white arm flashing in the night as it searched for the door.

(I see now we store him up year after year, Sexton writes, old suicides.)

Last night, Naomi, I told the heaviest knife I forgive you.

I said it a hundred times: once for each strike against the sharpening rod.

Later I slipped the brightened blade under my pillow.

I slept like the dead until dawn.​







--
Rachel Mennies is the author of The Glad Hand of God Points Backwards, the 2014 winner of the Walt McDonald First-Book Prize in Poetry and finalist for a National Jewish Book Award, and the chapbook No Silence in the Fields. She lives in Chicago, where she teaches at Loyola University, and is a member of AGNI’s editorial staff.

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  • Issue #27 Spring 2024
    • Issue #27 Art Spring 2024 >
      • Kristina Erny Spring 2024
      • Luiza Maia Spring 2024
      • Christy Lee Rogers Spring 2024
      • Erika Lynet Salvador Spring 2024
      • Marsha Solomon Spring 2024
    • Issue #27 Poetry Spring 2024 >
      • Terry Belew Spring 2024
      • Dustin Brookshire​ & Diamond Forde Spring 2024 Spring 2024
      • Dustin Brookshire​ & Caridad Moro-Gronlier Spring 2024 Spring 2024
      • Charlie Coleman Spring 2024
      • Isabelle Doyle Spring 2024
      • Reyzl Grace Spring 2024
      • Kelly Gray Spring 2024
      • Meredith Herndon Spring 2024
      • Mina Khan Spring 2024
      • Anoushka Kumar Spring 2024
      • Cate Latimer Spring 2024
      • BEE LB Spring 2024
      • Grace Marie Liu​ Spring 2024
      • Sarah Mills Spring 2024
      • Faisal Mohyuddin 2024
      • Marcus Myers Spring 2024
      • Mike Puican Spring 2024
      • Sarah Sorensen Spring 2024
      • Lynne Thompson Spring 2024
      • Natalie Tombasco Spring 2024
      • Alexandra van de Kamp Spring 2024
      • Donna Vorreyer Spring 2024
    • Fiction #27 Spring 2024 >
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      • Karen George Spring 2024
      • Raja'a Khalid Spring 2024
      • Riley Manning Spring 2024
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      • Beth Sherman Spring 2024
    • Nonfiction #27 Spring 2024 >
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    • Issue #28 Poetry Fall 2024 >
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      • Catherine Broadwall Fall 2024
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      • Judith Chalmer Fall 2024
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      • Sarah Jack Fall 2024
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      • Ae Hee Lee Fall 2024
      • Svetlana Litvinchuk Fall 2024
      • Mary Lou Buschi Fall 2024
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      • Camille Newsom Fall 2024
      • Elizabeth O'Connell- Thompson Fall 2024
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      • Diane Raptosh Fall 2024
      • Isaac Richards Fall 2024
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      • Alex Tretbar Fall 2024
      • Ruth Williams Fall 2024
      • Shannon K. Winston Fall 2024
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    • Issue #28 Fiction Fall 2024 >
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  • Issue #29 Spring 2025
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      • Na Yoon Amelia Cha-Ryu Spring 2025
    • Issue #29 Poetry Spring 2025 >
      • Deborah Bacharach Spring 2025
      • Diego Báez Spring 2025
      • Jaswinder Bolina Spring 2025
      • ​Ash Bowen Spring 2025
      • Christian J. Collier Spring 2025
      • ​Shou Jie Eng Spring 2025
      • Sara Fitzpatrick Spring 2025
      • Matthew Gilbert Spring 2025
      • Tammy C. Greenwood Spring 2025
      • Alejandra Hernández ​Spring 2025
      • Ben Kline ​Spring 2025
      • ​David Moolten Spring 2025
      • ​Tamer Mostafa Spring 2025
      • ​Rongfei Mu Spring 2025
      • Cynthia Neely Spring 2025
      • Pablo Otavalo Spring 2025
      • ​Bleah Patterson Spring 2025
      • ​M.A. Scott Spring 2025
      • ​Liam Strong ​ Spring 2025
      • Alexandra van de Kamp Spring 2025
      • ​Cassandra Whitaker Spring 2025
      • Angelique Zobitz Spring 2025
    • Issue #29 Fiction Spring 2025 >
      • Vanessa Blakeslee Spring 2025
      • K. J. Coyle Spring 2025
      • Meredith MacLeod Davidson Spring 2025
      • Jessica Mosher Spring 2025
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      • JM Huscher Spring 2025
      • Qurrat ul Ain Raza Abbas Spring 2025