SoMa Literary Review - How the Strangers and the City's Strangers Meet

How the Strangers and the City's Strangers Meet

By Jenna Humphrey

Outside the electric TV-blue room

Birds creak like doors

And men in corners wait

With fingers dipped in blood.

Do you know what sleeps in you:

Dogs, fury, dirt in the swelling spleen.

We are liars in the dark

Who layer lovers into a blanket until it warms

And yet say you, only you.

Yet should you criticize these lying lies

Notice how they make us brave

So that we lead one another into the god-hot dawn

Where sweat stings like dew from noxious plants

And beetles scream not for their mothers

Nor for the faceless glens,

Nor for the dead eggs they have lain

But rather for the same reason

That we come out of the dark:

To make a blanket of noise

Under which we are no longer alone.

Also by Jenna Humphrey on SoMa Literary Review:

I Am Too Hungry, Even Hollowed & Tender

Jenna Humphrey lives in San Francisco. She is a features writer for such publications as Tiny Mix Tapes and VegNews Magazine. Visit her blog at http://softsoftlysoft.blogspot.com