Poem of the Week: Judith Arcana

Can Safety Matches Make Us Safe?

You read the tiny cardboard book before

you scratch the strip under Augie's New Pizza
on the back of MIA:We still don't know

(and isn't that the truth?). Earn college

credit at home, taking tests on a screen

being screened. Bad credit? We can help.

Remember to close cover before striking

or go out on strike /// three strikes: you're out

of the fire into a plastic frying pan, teflon

on electric glowing rings - not like when

your phone rings and someone tells you

what you know you don't want to know.

-Judith Arcana

Used by permission.

Photo by: Barbara Gundle

First published in 5AM, Summer 2011

Judith Arcana writes poems, stories, and essays. Her books include Grace Paley's Life Stories, A Literary Biography, the poetry collection What if your mother, and the poetry chapbook 4th Period English. This year her work has appeared in several journals and anthologies online and in print. Judith lives in Oregon, in an apartment upstairs of her neighborhood library.

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