Gabrielle In Arrears
by Bill  Yarrow

It’s 10:46 in Shreveport on New Year’s Eve.
You’re rushing to the Ramada ballroom
for an evening of kisses, hors d’oeuvres,
and darkened drinks. Someone honks.
Unnerved, you swerve to the right, side-
swipe a Buick, slide back across the lane,
flip into a ditch. Doctor Claussen warned you
more than once about the consequences of
being distracted. Well, it’s too late to resuscitate
advice now. You should be calling 911, waving
at headlights, flagging down trucks, pulling
your bleeding husband from the car. Instead,
you’re just staring at your hands, as if, somehow,
they were imperious tools capable of magic.




Bill Yarrow is the author of WRENCH (erbacce-press, 2009) and "Wound Jewelry" (new aesthetic, 2010). His poems have recently appeared in Ramshackle Review, Istanbul Literary Review, Used Furniture Review, THIS Literary Magazine, BLIP, PANK, DIAGRAM, Negative Suck, Now Culture, Right Hand Pointing, Whale Sound, and Metazen. He lives in Illinois.

LOVE AND HOW IT GETS THAT WAY

by Bill Yarrow

You were the most beautiful girl in third grade. 

My thoughts were restless escapades. My heart 

was roasted butter. I donned wax wings and flew

toward the highest sky I could find. And then, 

among a score of others, to be invited to your party!

We all stood on the lawn behind your house, most 

of us in wide-striped tees, one of us in a bowtie, 

eyeing that thing in your backyard, that thing 

you pumped to spin around, and we all took turns,

you on one side in a yellow dress and one after 

the other of us on the other, and we spun you,  

spun you! and then that kid in the bowtie got on, got

dizzy, and vomited, and you looked at him with disgust,

and I felt like an apple had just landed in my lap. 

Bill Yarrow is the author of WRENCH (erbacce-press, 2009) and Wound Jewelry (new aesthetic, 2010). His poems have recently appeared in BLIP, PANK, Poetry International, DIAGRAM, Ramshackle Review, LITSNACK, Blue Fifth Review, this, Used Furniture Review, and Everyday Genius. He lives in Illinois.

How to Love

by Bill Yarrow

Sweep into one corner

all your ego.

Set a match to it.

Bill Yarrow is the author of WRENCH (erbacce-press, 2009) and Wound Jewelry (new aesthetic, 2010).  His poems have appeared in Poetry International, PANK, DIAGRAM, blossombones, Arsenic Lobster, Pif Magazine, The Centrifugal Eye, BLIP, Ramshackle Review and other magazines. He has twice won The Academy of American Poets Prize, has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and his poem Andalusia has been nominated by Up the Staircase for a 2010 Best of the Net award.

Fishboil
by Bill Yarrow


It’s a cheap way to feed three hundred people.

Hot fire. Metal pot. Peeled potatoes. Raw fish.

Control the temperature with a garden hose.

Burn off the scum with kerosene. Use giant

aluminum colanders. Lift them out with iron rods.

Set up a buffet table. Scatter picnic benches over

the grounds. Truck in some spicy cole slaw.

Provide trays and salt and pepper. If you boil it,

they will come. Those in shorts and socks. Those

in sundresses sans brassieres. Those in cocktail

gowns. The talk will be of bones and sunscreen

and beer and bones. Careful of the bones. You

have to protect the bones. Put sunscreen on your

bones. The reward of which palpable cherry pie.

Bill Yarrow is the author of WRENCH (erbacce-press 2009). His poems have appeared in Central Park, Confrontation, Berkeley Poets Cooperative, Poem, The Literary Review, Mantis, The Orange Room Review, blossombones, Angelic Dynamo, The Centrifugal Eye, Rio Grande Review, New Aesthetic, DIAGRAM, Arsenic Lobster, Pif Magazine, PANK, Magma, Poetry International and other literary magazines. He has poems forthcoming in Blue Fifth Review and Now Culture. He lives in Illinois.