Upside-Down by Carol Lynn Grellas

Upside-down, the pill bug
appears to be long gone…
but who knows, he could be

dreaming of last night’s
escapades, or under the spell
of too many cocktails thrown

back in a flurry of depression,
one after the next in hopes
of drowning his rollie-pollie

sorrows. Poor thing, I know
what it is to fold up into
a ball and make yourself small

again, within the boney amour
of skeletal support, and just
when you think you’ve

managed to hide deep inside
your own makeshift-womb
disappearing in whatever

heartache you’re wallowing in
at the time, there’s some asshole
standing by, ready to poke you

in the soft spot of your stomach,
rousing you from your deep
slumber, just to make sure you’re still

breathing, the way a new
mother might check an infant
in the middle of a sound sleep─

except it’s not your mother
and you don’t want to wake up.

The Unavoidable Crime of Losing Him by Carol Lynn Grellas

I tried to give him pills, tried to make him normal again─

He was a lone swan on a broken lake, who
wouldn’t swim to an unfamiliar place
where the cattails would be too thick for his liking

I told him, become what you’re meant to be
and nothing will be impossible─

But he was never sure which was truth or delusion.
He was too soft and I watched him disappear
through clouds until all that was left was
the shadow of an image I could barely see.

I tried to shock him back to truth, but his
was a better place and nothing could penetrate
that kind of nirvana.

He shot himself under the magnolia tree
down by the lake where the deer lope free.

They say they heard him say hallelujah
and I’d like to think someone was listening,
shouted it back, just as his body became

a dispensable, but beautiful vessel.