THE HOARDER’S BASEMENT

Even from the sidewalk we could glimpse
through tiny basement windows
the glint of water
almost lapping the jambs.

The trash boats lolling
with their rat captains,
tails dipped like pink rudders
into the dead pond.

One day it rained
two inches in an hour.
We heard glass shatter,
looked to see
the hoarder’s cellar
dump from every side

its black ballast
into the yard,
the drive,
the street.

A fleet of empty milk jugs merged
into the river
that was road.

Trash bags swirled
toward the grate.

Mice scrambled
up the peaks
of those tumbling islands.

In the torrent
tomcats hunched
along the bank
to dip their quick paws
into the rush
like bears
to snatch the passing fish.

Author Biography

Raised in South Florida, Paul David Adkins lives in New York. 

Perishable

Milk is for sidewalks,
clear, hard plastic gallons
are ripped open
by overzealous workers
with chubby fingers
and spilled across
stepped-on
sunflowers and
bodega-bought
gum that darkens
the ground.

Milk is for Manhattan,
which runs parallel
to Bovine Avenue
and Moo District
where shoppers with
size two waist lines
drink 2% milk and
mingle in bars.

Milk is for schools,
the grave danger
is the lactose-intolerant
students who drink
chocolate milk under
the guise that it’s
made from illegally
harvested soy, while
eating their
medium-well
done hamburgers
during lunch knowing
that this combination
isn’t very kosher.

Author Biography

Yevgeniy Levitskiy has a B.A. in English-Education from Brooklyn College. His writing has been published in Hot Summer Nights (Inner Child Press), The Fiction Shelf, Green Briar Review, and elsewhere. His forthcoming publications include The Books They Gave Me (Free Press/Simon & Schuster) and Everyday Other Things. He is currently at work on a middle-grade novel.