By Maria Zoccola

probably it was dinner and dancing
or dinner and music or dinner and
i don’t know, some other postscript
to the initial round of consumption,
shooting or drinks or riding around
in his truck while he pointed out
land the company was buying up.
that’s not important. what i want to
remember is yanking the chain off
the door to get to him on the stoop,
evening sun slicing through every
chink in the slow-rotting pergola
overhead, den of carpenter bees
and termites eating their lives
straight into the bone. he smiled
at me, wire frames and pinstripes
and the same kind of watch my
father wore, and when he put out
his hand and said let’s get the hell
out of here, i grabbed on so tight
he cussed and had to shake me off
his fingers. it wasn’t always so
gory, is what i’m saying. or maybe
i mean that if there were problems,
i was still digging their roots.

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Maria Zoccola is a queer Memphis writer and the author of Helen of Troy, 1993 (Scribner, 2025). She has writing degrees from Emory University and Falmouth University. Her work has previously appeared in Ploughshares, The Kenyon Review, The Iowa Review, ZYZZYVA, and elsewhere.