So my shirt is buttoned wrong 
and I missed a belt loop. At least 
I got dressed today. But this face? 
It’s an invention. It’s surprising 
how many ways a body can spring a leak. 
It’s a harbinger of doom kind of thing. 
It’s an I feel like I’ve been dipped 
in glue kind of thing. It’s the kind of thing 
that will make you spend too much time 
thinking of the songs you’d like played 
at your funeral. Having trouble 
distinguishing one day from the next? 
Me too. I read somewhere that a piece 
of the sun’s plasma broke off 
and was swept into a polar vortex. 
No better time than now to learn to play 
dominoes. To set fire to an accordion. 
To finally lear how to double dutch. 
They told us at work that we had to stop 
calling the big plastic bags body bags 
and I’m okay with that.    

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Patrick Meeds lives in Syracuse, NY and studies writing at the Syracuse YMCA’s Downtown Writer’s Center. He has been previously published in Stone Canoe literary journal, the New Ohio Review, Tupelo Quarterly, the Atticus Review, Whiskey Island, Guernica, The Main Street Rag, and Nine Mile Review among others.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Louis Staeble, fine arts photographer and poet, lives in Bowling Green, Ohio. His photographs have appeared in “Blue Hour”, “Cenacle”, “Clever Fox” “Conclave Journal”, “Elsewhere Magazine”, “GFT Magazine”, “Fifth Wednesday Journal”, “Four Ties Literary Review”, “Goatsmilk Magazine”, “Havik”, “Inklette”, “Light- A Journal”, “Little Somethings Press”, “Olney Magazine”, “Rubbertop Magazine”, “Sunspot Lit”, “The Helix”, ”Tupelo Quarterly”, “Twist In Time”, and “Windmill”. 2016, 2017 and 2018 as part of the Wood County Invitational. Instagram@louiestaeble Web page: staeblestudioa.weebly.com