April 2021
John Dorroh
travelerjd59@gmail.com
Bio Note: I believe that in order to improve your writing of poetry, that you need to read poetry — all kinds. For example, I have discovered Alicia Mountain, Kevin Prufer, Erika Meitner, and Agnes Vojta, to name a few. Each day I pick up a book of poetry and read out loud a few. That primes my writing pump for the day. My poems have appeared in Feral, Os Pressan, and Red Fez, to name a few.

It’s What We Can’t See That Does Us In

1.
 
I may be dying from the outside in,
like how an onion rots in the compost pile,
like the manner in which the moon peels back
its layers day by day, appearing each night
like a shrinking lesion, healing itself 
into nothingness. We’ve all seen it,
we’ve all looked up one night in the middle
of our fright and asked, where is it?
Mama, where did the moon go? Will it 
ever come back?
 
2.
 
I may be dying from the inside out,
like the way a microwave cooks a potato,
like the way a silhouette fashions itself
with nothing more than a dim source
of light and magnifies itself into a fire. I grab 
what I can on the way out of the house.
 
3.
 
The powder snow is a myth, its delicate
outreach unable to smother anyone’s existence.
It can kill you from the outside in, from the inside
out. It can get into your lungs, in your head,
your heart and make silhouettes bounce off of
the retina into the lungs, the liver, onto the barn
door, deep down into your boots where 
bacteria thrive and slip into cuts that you cant’ see.
©2021 John Dorroh
Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the author (email address above) to tell her or him. You might say what it is about the poem that moves you. Writing to the author is what builds the community at Verse Virtual. It is very important. -JL