VOXOxford Mississippi’s Independent Literary Journal
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MICHAEL MCFEE Shard
There’s a chip of soap
stuck to the shower curtain,
an ivory shard. It must
have been flung there yesterday
by her husband, shaved from
the fresh bar by one of his
nails as he rushed not to be
late to work again. The
young patrolman said he didn’t
suffer, no ma’am, not
with that kind of head-on
impact. She rubs the soap with
a fingertip until it
lathers, a dollop of froth whose smell
says clean, then takes that
small meringue into her
mouth like a frozen breath
called back into the body
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