ivy crawls through the bricks
like spring sneaks into summer

every bathtub in the neighborhood
full of holy water & lemonade
same face just visible below the murk

if mary won’t fix your troubles
then at least she’ll watch

storm cut the power
so the women are on their porches

clatter of lighters
and ice in chipped mugs

block after block of dioramas of women
who are over your bullshit –

in this one
a too-long tweety bird shirt
and dirty chanclas

in this one a fur collar
detached from a coat
used to mop up a child’s vomit

in this one the smell of fire
and the sound of a window
breaking from the inside

Cassandra de Alba’s work has appeared in Big Lucks, Gabby, Smoking Glue Gun, and Tinderbox, among other publications. Her chapbooks habitats (Horse Less Press, 2016) and ORB (Reality Hands, 2018) are about deer and the moon, respectively. She is a co-host at the Boston Poetry Slam at the Cantab Lounge and an editor at Pizza Pi Press.