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Supermassive Black Hole and Candidates

Nothing can get out
or in. There is only

the sound of the rain,
frozen, at the window,

unfamiliar voices in the hall,
and your own mind scratching

at its thoughts in circles, head
to tail. Repeat.

Repeat, the record where the scratch
is audible. The apple you will eat

from skin to stem, your pacing feet
on the porch’s softening wood.

Out for a smoke now, your arms bare
in the cold though you feel

nothing in this listless, gray world
where the sky is always falling.

If only there was some way to tear it all down,
take it all down with you: the wood

and rain, the smoke, your fingers,
how they ache to hold.

The cold of this skin.
But nothing can get in.

Marci Rae Johnson is an editor and writer. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Image, Moon City Review, Main Street Rag, The MacGuffin, Rhino, The Louisville Review, and 32 Poems, among others. Her most recent book, Basic Disaster Supplies Kit, was published by Steel Toe Books.

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