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Ann Ward is a writer and editor. She is the winner of the 2017 Daniel & Merrily Glosband Poetry Prize and the 2016 Delaney Fellowship in Fiction. Her work has appeared most recently in No Tokens, Minola Review, Powder Keg, and This Magazine. You can find her eating cold borscht at annward.ca

This poem was longlisted for the 2018 Peach Gold in Poetry with guest judge Morgan Parker.

1 poem

by Ann Ward

I can see their hands, the table, the condiments

there are two people I have to remember not to hug in public

in case we catch and our security tag hearts

bleed yellow ink across our sweatshirts

once we were like Ross and Rachel having sex in the planetarium

now I keep forgetting my ice cream tubs at people's houses

melting in coat piles

and he’s too nervous to bring me home

or he had second thoughts after the first good ones

I say come on let's go Penn is here from Penn and Teller

but he respects a good bullet in the teeth

I used to make out with everyone

I'd say Leanne your lip ring feels so good!

and she'd say great!

tipping a paper plate to my mouth to drink what’s left

praying for peanut butter popsicles and heat waves

in the kitchen Penn is filling a trash bag with helium

trying to blind us with his iPhone flashlight

when I see you next don’t mention

that red coat in a box at the bar

the strawberry ice cream on your floor

running into you is like

finding clean teeth in dirt

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