THERE are 3 houses in 3 different colors.
Each owner keeps a certain kind of sadness
locked in the cupboard. The tall man lives in
the white house. The short man keeps rabbits
as pets. The woman in her white dress drinks
vodka and stays up late. The yellow house is
to the immediate left of the white one. The
woman in the second house keeps her sadness
in a smallish box. The older woman with the
violets on her hat lives in the first house. The
girl with the blonde hair lives next door to the
man who keeps rabbits. One summer the
rabbits multiply and chew through the fence.
Mostly, they all keep to themselves.
—
This selection comes from Kristy Bowen’s book the shared properties of water and stars, available from Noctuary Press. Purchase your copy here!
A writer and visual artist, Kristy Bowen is the author of several book, chapbook, and zine projects, including the forthcoming beautiul, sinister (Maverick Duck Press, 2013) and girl show (Black Lawrence, 2013). She lives in Chicago where she runs dancing girl press & studio, devoted to paper-oriented arts and publishing work by women writers/artists.
Andrew Koch’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Bluestem, Connotation Press, Mojo, Rust + Moth, and others. Although a Tennessee-native, Andrew presently lives in Spokane, Washington with his wife and cat while teaching literature and pursuing his MFA in Creative Writing at Eastern Washington University.
