Two Poems by C.C. Russell
FEVER
October,
this image of
you standing
there, looking
up
while the sky spits
a snow that’s nearly hard
as hail,
your face pink
with fire.
The photograph knows
only this moment,
your eyes.
It can’t see the awful crumbling
just beyond the edges,
the days of collapse coming
over these outer limits
of hope,
that cancer
lingering
just out
of frame.
LINES IN THE SAND
I have to think that the point of no return was when they started setting fire to our pets without provocation. When they stole our secrets and laughed at us through the speakers that they had installed throughout our bedrooms. Perhaps we finally hit that point when those buttons that they made us wear started shocking us each time that we entered a public restroom. I think the first among us said enough is enough when they outlawed breakfast before eleven AM. The fishhooks they placed into our lower lip on the first Thursday of each month was the point when we began to take notice and start to ask questions. When they poisoned our children’s cereals was the first sign that there might be a problem. Maybe when they stopped allowing us to wear clothing in our cars. When they took our phones and wallets and replaced them with lemon meringue pies that we were told to carry everywhere. I distinctly remember our local congressman saying that he had some reservations about the first public clown decapitation. He wanted to remain civil about it but somehow it just didn’t sit right with him and he wondered if maybe, just maybe it wasn’t the right thing to do.
C.C. Russell has been published here and there across the web and in print. You can find his words in such places as Split Lip Magazine, The Colorado Review, Cimarron Review, and the anthology Blood, Water, Wind, and Stone. He has been nominated for Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, and the Pushcart Prize. He currently resides in Wyoming with a couple of people and a couple of cats. You can find more of his work at ccrussell.net or follow him on Twitter @c_c_russell .
We are able to publish these poems thanks to supporters of the Malarkey Books Writers Fund.