two poems

by Anna Drasko

At the hardware store buying forty-two-inch cable cutters

Hammers. Everything 

& hammers.

On both sides of the aisle, 

hammers & also

nails. Long, thick, 

spiraled, silver. Screws 

& I stashed them

in my front pocket, 

mending like trickled salt.

Why did you apply to Penn?

I placed a pin 

where it severed. Isn’t it

hard to get in there? 

Tap tap tap.

The slits were often worse 

& I’m tired

of fixing things, making 

memory bloodless.

You, too, could settle in 

with the bristled brushes: 

ugly, hairy & stupid. Lol.

Dad had some jobs 

in hardware stores, 

so did Mom. Cacophonic bits 

of metal, climbing 

hedges of wrenches, 

wandering PVC lanes, tiny

fingers tracing lit shape

of bulb. Each curl bolted 

to my skull 

with that habitual tap, 

tap. 

I still crave the smell

of poplar planks. Sometimes 

a poem starts 

as an ode.

Offspring

after Eliza Griswold

I never wants to be a mother.

They decided last night 

after I’s plants died because they went 

a week without a drop down the throat

or I blowing breath at the papered sugar veins.

I’s just trying to live but the ticks

are babes feeding at their breasts, the same

ones I keeps cursing at the wind to rip off.

The ticks, unimpressed with the fit, laugh 

behind I’s back, chortling blood, and cast 

votes: I already is a mother. perhaps.

A father. Sorry, parent.

---

Anna Drasko is a writer living in East Tennessee. Their work appears or is forthcoming in phoebe, Thimble Literary Magazine, Connecticut River Review, Philadelphia Stories, San Pedro River Review, fifth wheel press, and elsewhere. They hold degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and Penn State.