Two Poems by Rebecca Karas

The Library Is Packed After New Year’s Day

Trash flies out of her car,
snatched by the wind
like doves as she
unbuckles the car seat.
She’s singing a song
I used to know,
so I run after
the chrome-like
plastic bag,
the dull, flapping
junk mail,
but they’re gone by the time
I hold the wings
in a rumpled bouquet.
And what would
I have done anyway?
Handed her
an aviary,
a fistful
of shame, while
the kid stares?
I catch my reflection
between the salt stains
on her car,
that I’ll be damned
ever turn to rust.
The parking lot
is bursting.
We spill over
into the street.
I spill over
into the street.
Watching the kid’s
curls bounce,
matching his mother’s gait
while nestled
in her arms.
The beginnings
of a disparate life
unfurling in my mind.

Andromeda on the Highway

I’m trying not to think
of the opossum mother’s outstretched hand:
pink fingertips,
transparent claws,
a flash of gore beneath.
And how her babies
stretched like nebulas
past her.
Bursts of red constellations
on the asphalt,
flesh and gravel
fused together.
Could I still
sacrifice myself
to save them?
Would my tissue meld
against the rock,
and twist into
a black hole
if I let it?

Rebecca is a poet and weird fiction writer from the midwest. Their work has been published in Ritual Dagger, Cursed Morsels Zine, and Conquest Publishing’s Monstrous Angels anthology. Their poems are forthcoming in Michigan City Review of Books and Some Words. You can find their rambling thoughts @rebeccakaras.bsky.social / instagram @rebecca.karas