This selection, chosen by guest editor Joey Gould, is from How to Play by Katie Manning (Louisiana Literature Press 2022).
The Domino Effect
The blue domino
tin in the closet
makes me think in multiples
of five. How
many games did we
play? Five, ten, fifteen,
twenty, two thousand…
How many times did
I sing you Help Me,
Wanda, and listen
to stories about
how Grandpa always
tried to block the game?
I can’t add these games
and stories up to
anything but a
wish for more. Memo-
ries collapse into
each other, a pile
of your focused eyes
large through your glasses,
your hand hovering
to place your last piece.
Katie Manning is the founding editor of Whale Road Review and a professor of writing at Point Loma Nazarene University. Winner of the Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award for Tasty Other, she’s the author of eight poetry collections, most recently Hereverent (Agape Editions, 2023) and How to Play (Louisiana Literature Press, 2022). Her writing has been featured on Poetry Unbound, Tangle News, Verse Daily, and many other venues. 
Joey Gould, who is Sundress Academy for the Arts Spring 2024 Writer in Residence, wrote The Acute Avian Heart (2019, Lily Poetry Review) & Penitent>Arbiter (2022, Lily Poetry Review), while their recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Meow Meow Pow Pow, Miniskirt Magazine, & Persephone’s Fruit. They also serve as Poetry Editor for Drunk Monkeys.
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