Two Poems by Erin McIntosh

The wolves are at my heart

Wolves are at my heart
Again but I only continue
To revolve around you like
The earth to sun a mere planet
Next to your heat / I have grown
So small diminished by this
Outside light / I don’t even wish
To write poetry anymore but I have
Lost all other sense of language
My own breath foreign to me as
Morse code fathomless and un-
Fathomable / An earthquake needed
To shake things up / Like when
The wolves came for me once
Before teeth tearing while my feet
Planted stayed firmly on this
Immutable turf ready for the knock-
Out prepared to be torn apart

---

Just like that

I leave just as the blossoms
arrive. Just as the trees
are turning purple I leave

and, looking behind me,
I see the sun, low, spilling
its gold into the city.

Last night a man jumped
out of the neighboring
apartment, three stories high.

The girl in the window
across from mine, leaning out
to tell me this, said he thought

he was being chased.

Texts sent in the a.m.: When
are you leaving? – Tonight.
Just like that? – Just like that.

I drive with the music
loud, the volume turned up
to twenty-four. Eighty miles

per hour and only one hand
on the steering wheel. I slide
my phone across the seat

and I think briefly on him
and him and minute regrets.
I smile until it breaks. I smile

until I’m laughing. I am alone.
I tell myself I have nothing
to do but sing along with

whatever song plays next.

---

about the author:

Erin McIntosh is a writer and actress currently living in Los Angeles. Her writing has appeared and is forthcoming in various journals including Two Serious Ladies, Noble / Gas Qtrly, Bone Bouquet, Lavender Review, Cleaver Magazine, Gravel, Hawai’i Review and Plenitude Magazine. Visit her at www.erinmcintoshofficial.com.