The Hour Between Dog and Wolf

Monica Ferrell
Image of COVID-19 virus. Graphic by Bianca Ibarlucea.
Graphic by Bianca Ibarlucea
Is it just me or is this wine

Terribly bitter
Which I’ll drink anyway
To dissolve the bad

Aspirin of day
That did nothing for any headache,
Merely scratched at my throat like chalk.
The weather has turned.

Lately the dead spoil
In a van outside the morgue,
Filling the air with rumors
Thick enough the neighbors complain,

While an inmate cuts out holes
For a stranger in an island where no one goes.
We’ll have to devise a new method
Of weighting bodies down with stones

So they can’t return
Asking the same unanswerable
Question of us who failed
Them, yet keep going in this world.

Monica Ferrell is the author of three books of poetry and fiction, most recently You Darling Thing, a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Award and Believer Book Award in Poetry.
Originally published:
June 16, 2020

Featured

The Shapes of Grief

Witnessing the unbearable
Christina Sharpe

Writing in Pictures

Richard Scarry and the art of children’s literature
Chris Ware

Garth Greenwell

The novelist on writing about the body in crisis
Meghan O’Rourke

You Might Also Like


Prelude

Rowan Ricardo Phillips

Subscribe

New perspectives, enduring writing. Join a conversation 200 years in the making. Subscribe to our print journal and receive four beautiful issues per year.
Subscribe