Cammy Thomas
Chilling Kills
I’m a killer
from my living room
among my lovely things
a killer swimming
in a cool pool
trying not to hurt anyone
under my own
tall trees a killer
everything about me
kills even in my everyday
shoes even in
my cool pool
in my living room
I take it as a given
nothing wicked comes
mowers mowing
dust vacuumed away
while I’m somehow killing
I take it as a given
how clean we keep it
how wicked
chilling kills
of people I don’t see
because I’m vacuuming
how clean we keep it
my America
how free of weeds
—Submitted on
Cammy Thomas is the author of Inscriptions (Four Way Books, 2014) and Cathedral of Wish (Four Way Books, 2005), winner of the Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America. Her new collection, Tremors, is forthcoming from Four Way in 2021. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poet Lore, Image Journal, Tampa Review, The Missouri Review, and Salamander, as well as in the anthology Poems in the Aftermath (Indolent Books, 2018). She lives in Lexington, Mass.
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