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  • Home
  • Nostrovia! Press archive
    • Former N!P Home Page >
      • Bartenders
      • How do we distribute?
    • Poetry Contest >
      • 2020 Winners
    • Chapbooks >
      • Full Catalog >
        • 2018 Chapbooks
        • 2017 Chapbooks >
          • Loathe/Love/Lathe by Aeon Ginsberg
          • our own soft by Katie Clark
          • every time i park my car I feel like i'm doing something wrong by Joseph Parker Okay
        • 2016 Chapbooks >
          • I Was Talking About Love—You Are Talking About Geography by Bob Sykora
          • Make a Fist & Tongue the Knuckles by Emily O'Neill
          • I Can Remember the Meaning of Every Tarot Card But I Can’t Remember What I Texted You Last Night by Elle Nash
        • 2015 Chapbooks >
          • Moon Facts by Bob Schofield
          • Juliet II by Sarah Xerta
          • Bird Lizard Horse by August Smith
    • F/A/L/D >
      • Current Issue
      • Archives >
        • Issue #014
        • Issue #013
        • Issue #012
        • Issue #011
        • Issue #010
        • Issue #009
        • Issue #008
        • Issue #007
        • Issue #006
        • Issue #005
        • Issue #004
        • Issue #003
        • Issue #002
        • Issue #001
    • Traveling Bookstore
Nostrovia! Press
"I pretend not to notice

your absence— how my car isn’t spiced with your oakmoss
& mint anymore."

Laura villareal

Picture
Laura Villareal earned her MFA from Rutgers University-Newark. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Palette Poetry, Black Warrior Review, Waxwing, and elsewhere. She has received scholarships Key West Literary Seminar and The Highlights Foundation. More of her writing can be found at: www.lauravillareal.com
"The Long Trajectory of Grief"   
A squeal cracks bright like hot metal in water. Before
the sun has licked across the fields, I wonder how to save myself

before guilt sets like a stain. I wonder
if the constellations above me can lift guilt or if they’re only

a temporary solution for what I feel. In the morning
I find three wild boars in the street, dead. A red

bumper lying near one of their carcasses.
Is the nature of a crash to always leave something behind?

Fog glimmers up from the road forsaken
by first light. I pretend not to notice

your absence— how my car isn’t spiced with your oakmoss
& mint anymore. But I pray the vultures pick me

clean like a Tibetan sky
burial before anyone smells grief on me.


originally published in The Acentos Review

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