ON FINDING A LUMP AT TWENTY NINE POETRY

Bailey Quinn

The first vole skittered across our kitchen at midnight — dark eyes, hunched back, thin tail dragging behind it. A week later the sounds came: tiny claws scratching at chipboard cabinetry and the edges of my ears. My husband said I was imagining things, so I set traps in the hall by our bed, the shower, our daughter’s room, the yard, and the vanity, and check every morning until snaps yank me out of bed at two a.m., and I’m feeling around in the dark for a lifeless lump, but it’s hard to find what you can’t see, and my arms and back hurt from all the feeling around before pain gathers in my neck until my hand hits a hard, round shape evidence.

He tums on the lights and I hand Him the prize

He says it’s nothing more than a dirty sock left He’s right— on the floor. I can’t sleep. He says go to bed, don’t worry. Is he sure? He says sometimes yards have voles, it’s fine. He says if they are here, we just have to hope they don’t chew their way through the baseboards into the house. But they aren’t here. He says it’s just your anxiety. He’s right. Breathe.

A week later, the second vole drags a bag of dusty, orange Cheetos along the baseboards of our living room. I finally call pest control and let them dig up the yard. They find only half-eaten orange peels and broken blossoms beneath our trees and petunias — I scream into the garden.

I was right. I knew they were here. Right?

Pest control says their findings are inconclusive. They say sometimes yards bend to the mercy of summer rains and soft piles of dirt freeze in winter forming dips and valleys. Sometimes. Soil is dense. Sometimes. That looks like voles. Pest control tells me not to worry. The house is most likely clear. The yard’s most likely healthy. They say I’m fine. That can’t be right?

I can’t hear anything over the sound of scratching coming from under the deck where my violets were planted, roots rotten and dying before I clawed them from the ground to stuff them in holes where I swore the voles buried their children.

ON A NIGHT WHEN I DIDN’T WIN THE LOTTERY IN GREEKTOWN

POETRY Truth Thomas

The Eastern Avenue vein we rode kept its pulse of honking, signs over restaurants on Ponca Street kept their vows to blue, white lettering upon them, bright as teeth in Crest commercials— brighter even, than the check engine light in an ‘87 Ford Taurus.

On a night when I didn’t win the lottery in Greektown—all 656 mega millions of it, good cooking still claimed air of this village, firing up hope in our bellies like pilot lights on stoves. Every road to ambrosia leads to a restaurant in Greektown, and we circled them: Acropolis, Zorba, Ikaros: I tell them, “We are here to look for safe parking—only,” and not to let our nostrils get too happy at what we can’t afford: cheese pie, spinach pie, gyros up the culinary ying-yang, lamb chops, licking chops, fried calamari... “We are going to Burger King, about a mile up the road,” I tell them, “And then we’ll come back, and maybe one day, claim a table.” But on a night when I didn’t win the lottery in Greektown, I hardly thought of it at all. Old men still played cards in shuffling smiles. Young men still led their dicks on leashes. There was no time to rear view jobs erased like scratch-offs or Thieves in the Temple of city shelter nights. “Beware of Dog” signs still patrolled back alleys.

Buses still stopped to catch their air brake breath. There were no plates to rehash days dodging saw-toothed jaws of un-social services. Homework had to be done. Whopper Jrs. had to be inhaled. Children, disguised as winter coats, still had back seat blankets to dive. “Scooch together tighter than Legos,” I say to them. On a night when I didn’t win the freedom deed in Greektown, “Just one more night,” I say to myself.