How You Hunger
As you chisel windshield ice
and tighten the scarf
on your neck, now and then
you might detect a scent—
maybe a cross between sweat
and wild onion, or one that mixes
jet exhaust and freshly
sharpened pencils. Even these,
if you allow them,
can buoy you with such longing
for what’s next, your cracked boots
swell to the size of pontoons
and you can walk to Australia,
reaching Perth in time to catch
Flip the Grill Man just before
his shift ends. He’ll hand you
your plate: fresh snapper
raucous with lime and cilantro.
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Merrill Oliver Douglas’s first full length collection, Persephone Heads For the Gate, won the 2022 Gerald Cable Book Award from Silverfish Review Press. She is also the author of the poetry chapbook, Parking Meters into Mermaids (Finishing Line Press, 2020). Her poems have appeared in Baltimore Review, Barrow Street, Tar River Poetry, Stone Canoe, SWWIM Every Day, Verse Daily, and Whale Road Review, among others. She lives near Binghamton, New York.
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Stone Poetry Quarterly 