Ronnie K. Stephens
How Many Ways To Die
without the heart still as a wild rabbit
watching you from the edge of the yard
without the lungs limp and hollow
and burning for what filled them once
what could make them full again
okay I’ll go first here’s one I bet you have
never heard it starts like it always does
we are sitting together on the couch long
after the kids go to bed and she says it
she says I can’t stand when I hear someone
pee and all the sudden I am tachycardic
at the toilet for ten straight years angling
the stream to the side of the bowl where
it makes almost no sound look how easy
it is to erase yourself to unmake yourself
until you are so small and so almost there
even your own children are surprised
when you speak or laugh your son shouts
swears he didn’t know you were in the room
your turn now tell me how you died today
watching you from the edge of the yard
without the lungs limp and hollow
and burning for what filled them once
what could make them full again
okay I’ll go first here’s one I bet you have
never heard it starts like it always does
we are sitting together on the couch long
after the kids go to bed and she says it
she says I can’t stand when I hear someone
pee and all the sudden I am tachycardic
at the toilet for ten straight years angling
the stream to the side of the bowl where
it makes almost no sound look how easy
it is to erase yourself to unmake yourself
until you are so small and so almost there
even your own children are surprised
when you speak or laugh your son shouts
swears he didn’t know you were in the room
your turn now tell me how you died today
Ronnie K. Stephens holds a Bachelor of Arts in Classical Studies, a Master of Arts in Creative Writing, a Master of Fine Arts in Fiction, and a PhD in English. His research centers the role of poetry in subverting antiethnic and anti-LGBTQ legislation affecting public education. He is the author of Universe in the Key of Matryoshka, They Rewrote Themselves Legendary, The Kaleidoscope Sisters, and Transgressive Poetics in the Twenty-First Classroom.
