All in by Cynthia Atkins

by Cynthia Atkins


(After The Zone of Interest)


Woman snaps door shut //
a glance over her shoulder//
something like shame// in a gesture//
// like a dismal secret //meant only for her//
She lifts the coat//from the sturdy hook//
it’s the fur of a being // that once had eyes
and teeth // A being now sewn// with pearl buttons //
We watch the woman// dare herself // to slip// into the dense
fold of underfur// It must feel like the warm embrace//
of an enemy// Her ivory hands // tuft up the collar//
She gazes at herself in the mirror// and reaches inside //
the left pocket // expecting a foreign habitat //
to find the satin soft //as an infant’s earlobe//
She pulls a stick of lipstick// from the pocket//
//puckers and dabs her papery lips///with another
women’s shade//like the wine stain her husband
spilled on the pristine tablecloth //in the greenery
of her garden// The maids would be working out //
the stains until dawn//She gazes at her image //
//wide as a regal estate//There were smells
of other women// on his clothes// not dead women //
Down the hall// she hears her children laughing//
while counting//gold fillings// the brothers keep in a box //
// like voodoo talismans //Outside a dog is barking//
Behind the woman// the window is gray// the barracks over
the wall // expire plumes of smoke // no sirens// utter silence
//The woman hangs// up the coat// Closes the door//

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Cynthia Atkins (She, Her) is the author of Psyche’s Weathers, In the Event of Full Disclosure, Still-Life With God, and a chapbook from Harbor Editions, 2022. Her work has appeared in many journals, including Alaska Quarterly Review, BOMB, Cider Press Review, Diode, I, LEON Literary Review, Los Angeles Review, North American Review, Permafrost, SWWIM Every Day, and Verse Daily. Atkins lives on the Maury River of Rockbridge County, Virginia. See cynthiaatkins.com.

by Cynthia Atkins

Their arms, almost touching, but not. Made in a factory of hands and chains,
unholy plinths furnished and built to tender our long vowels. Taller than us,

and standing to quell the worry of having nothing to say, if only for the weather,
the shopkeeper’s favorite topic. Wired through the fields, where haystacks are yellow

as newly sharpened school pencils. Now waiting to channel our instruments,
our proxy of voices. Our chorus of gossip taking shape in the chatter of afternoon sun.

As if conductors in a symphony, because the music to our language holds
the long maps to the fossils, bone to bone, house to house. Even the birds are wearing

their darkened silhouettes, outlining the sky where long distances go
to be alone. Our glyphs hanging on the laundry line of clouds,

as if the divine was burrowed inside our need to speak—Greet the day,
kick up the volume, take umbrage, and really listen to someone’s

heart leaping into chords—words thrust first, between a string and a cup.

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Cynthia Atkins is the author of three poetry collections, most recently, Still-Life With God (Saint Julian Press, March 2020). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, BOMB, The Cortland Review, Diode, North American Review, SWWIM Every Day, Tinderbox Poetry Review, and Verse Daily. See more at www.cynthiaatkins.com and @catkinspoet.

by Cynthia Atkins

I took my body out of the hand-me-down 
bin. It sagged empty as a winter coat 
on its hanger. Believe it or not, once it was chased
by a town-car of clowns—The drunken 
pimpled sons of sons of sons 
of the Ku Klux Klan.  
            I was a Jew, a Jew.
My body had kinky hair and a crooked nose.
Not like the girls with bowling-pin white teeth
and doily-tanned toes. The blood of a Jew 
           on my virgin Kmart underwear.
They shadowed me down aisles, 
into a junkyard purgatory of broken toys.    
          God’s drunk at 2 am 
when the fluorescent lights
hone in on the Denny’s bathroom. 
Interrogating every truth and blemish.  
           I did it in the graffiti-riddled stall, 
staring down a cracked toilet. My body’s 
tongue forced on his dark pulse.  
He squeezed my head so hard, 
          it burned a hole in time. 
I counted the headstones 
of my people, like tiny boats 
in an inlet. One by one, they saved me.  
The cuts and wounds filled 
not with blood, but umpteen years 
       of Sweet’N Low and sadness.      
I’m easy, tell me what I want to hear
”Your face is damn ugly.”
The next day, 
“Kike” and “Slut” Magic Markered 
on my locker— a swastika like a jungle gym
for the dead. My name scrawled in every 
defiled bathroom stall—Our calls
       hollow in the wax of God’s ear.

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Cynthia Atkins is the author of Psyche’s Weathers and In The Event of Full Disclosure, and the forthcoming collection, Still-Life With God. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Alaska Quarterly Review, Apogee, BOMB, Cleaver Magazine, Denver Quarterly, Diode, Florida Review, Flock Lit, Green Mountains Review, Los Angeles Review, North American Review, Rust + Moth, SWWIM Every Day, Tampa Review, andVerse Daily, among others. She lives in Rockbridge County, VA with her family. More info at www.cynthiaatkins.com or @catkinspoet.

by Cynthia Atkins

It has been steam cleaned

in 10 states. Slapped by a mother

spat on by a boss. This is how

everything is fine until it is not.

            It changed its mind

like umbrellas brought

on all the wrong days. 

It wore shoulder pads and burned

          a husband with a curling iron. 

It called 911. It did what it had to do. 

It held your bag of hygiene, oily

perfume, rotten teeth. Joy and pain

          live on the same street.  

It has an expiration date.  

It hung in the closet like a bad check.

It flagged all the pools of blood

        and the grief of mothers.

It was a dirge of old wars and vacant

parking lots. It was the place I sat alone

and cried all nightmare long.  

It is a junkyard clock

        with dog-chewed hands. 

It is God mouthing the anthem

I never learned. It gnawed

        at the wind shield, made of rain.  

It sat in a diner all night long, waiting

for the lord or the guy with a day job

        to take his knife home.  

This is the lake that lives within the skin,

that lives with an illness that dangles 

like a yo-yo on a string. And another body

       beget out of mine, long and wide

as the Rio Grande. The body just wants

something loyal and divine,

     a dog’s eyelids fluttering in sleep.

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Cynthia Atkins is the author of Psyche’s Weathers and In The Event of Full Disclosure, and the forthcoming collection, Still-Life With God. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Alaska Quarterly Review, Apogee, BOMB, Cleaver Magazine, Cultural Weekly, Diode, Florida Review, Flock Lit, Green Mountains Review, Le Zaporogue, Los Angeles Review, North American Review, Rust + Moth, Sweet: A Literary Confection, Tampa Review, and Verse Daily, and have been nominated for Pushcart and Best of The Net. Atkins teaches creative writing at Blue Ridge Community College and lives on the Maury River of Rockbridge County VA with her family. See more at www.cynthiaatkins.com.