Two Poems by Erica Anderson-Senter

Questions for My Friend’s Priest or Deacon.

Will whiskey provide any absolution for the sins
I’ve embraced with [redacted]?
How about wine?

What exactly defines “mortally wounded”?
Does it have anything to do with melancholy love
Or sexting?

Is heaven anything like skimming my hands on
top of the lake I loved as a kid?

Are you busy next Thursday, baby? Because,
basically, I might be dying.

Please advise; my blood is turning solid.

Marriage. A Love Poem.

Laying flat against the panes of glass
we will dissect our lungs
to know breathing.

We will squabble about who cuts who first and where.
We will get excited to unfold the pink secrets
of the third lobe.
Maybe we’ll find evening on the lake or
my missing black sock.

Our blood will remind us of our dads;
what maybe they could have talked about:
wrenches and oil and
“those damn kids, they’ll learn one day.”

But we won’t.
Our veins will smell of cheap booze
and sex.

Erica Anderson-Senter writes mainly in Fort Wayne, Indiana. She has a spectacular pony tail and a gap between her teeth. Hobbies include biting her nails and telling bad jokes.