POETRYBillet-douxScott Stoller
Image © Tim Gouw
for Robin
The way you bend a tree
and make it grow
whichever way
you got a mind to.
Your songs
and your hummin'
and whatnot.
Able to walk through doors
no one has even seen.
The law doesn't like
such mysteries.
Scott Stoller's poems have appeared in many online and printjournals and anthologies includingWeave, Prick of The Spindle, Right Hand Pointing, and Best Contemporary Tanka. He lives with his wife and family in the suburbs of Chicago.
More Poetry
spider up her thigh in the dimly lit room
held down, stared down
embers of the abyss snap around her
My father sexually abused me.
When I got married,
I hyphenated my name.
No one questioned it at the time.
But in the middle of my parents’ late divorce,
everyone wants to know about names.
i was depressed,
and i wanted
to take a
walk;
you said you'd join me—
didn't mean i wanted
netflix and chill,
it happened before words came
to tell me how to feel about it
newly connected neurons torn apart
or perverted—
forever firing blanks into the microbiological air
As a child
The lessons taught
Can bring a pain never thought.
The lessons on trust
And heartache
Sear the soul.
