"Nihil Ad Rem" by Sage Ravenwood

Nihil Ad Rem

Two neighbors who can’t stand each other
find themselves in a clinic getting

bloodwork at the same time.
There’s a dog who loves stray cats.

She doesn’t love them when she needs to
relieve herself, growling her impatience.

Rose drapes billow from a broken window,
the only color left in a fire-riddled apartment.

Flowers belched into falling snow.
A January slate sky spreads open

her prayer hands mimicking a child,
”Here is the church, here is the steeple.”

An orange tabby watching
from a collapsed shed,

”Sees all the people” with trust issues.
Sunlight slices through dirty panes of glass

smudged with nose and paw prints.
A man sits in a red car idling at a stop sign

waiting for someone who never arrives,
guns his engine and takes off.

There’s a backlit silhouette closing
curtains after checking locks.

In the morning a fox strides
down the middle of the road.

Winter sitting on the edge
of a knife blade of days.

Sage Ravenwood

Sage Ravenwood is a deaf Cherokee woman residing in upstate NY with her two rescue dogs, Bjarki and Yazhi, and her one-eyed cat, Max. She is an outspoken advocate against animal cruelty and domestic violence. Her work can be found in The Temz Review, Contrary, Pioneertown Literary Journal, Grain, The Familiar Wild: On Dogs and Poetry (Sundress Press), The Rumpus, Lit Quarterly, PØST, Massachusetts Review, Savant-Garde, ANMLY (Anomaly), River Mouth Review, Native Skin Lit, Santa Clara Review, The Normal School, UCity Review, Punk Noir, Janus Literary, Jelly Bucket, Colorado Review, Pangyrus, PRISM International, 128 Lit, A Gathering of the Tribes, Ponder Review, and more. Her book, Everything That Hurt Us Becomes a Ghost is forthcoming from Gallaudet University Press, Fall 2023.

Headshot: Sage Ravenwood

Photo Credit: Staff