Polytropos, Tuscaloosa The neighborhood alphas leave engines running as hands soap car windows with specialized sponges. I try watching but the plot is deadbeat daddy, common weekend refrain. Patches of armpit sweat vary by fabric but football logos every pocket. Silence is a scrimmage I invent back plots yet action runs circle to circle. Huddles over tires. We are oval at best, baby blue eggs lining Easter baskets. Kids shuck corn from cobs and leave the silk on the lawn for nests. A mom wonders what happened to muses. A…
Read MoreAlina Stefanescu
Alina Stefanescu was born in Romania and lives in Alabama with four incredible mammals. Find her poems and prose in recent issues of Juked, DIAGRAM, New South, Mantis, VOLT, Cloudbank, New Orleans Review Online, and others. Her debut fiction collection, Every Mask I Tried On, won the Brighthorse Books Prize and will be available in May 2018. She serves as Poetry Editor for Pidgeonholes and President of the Alabama State Poetry Society.