Poetry from NER 36.4
Mike pins me to the sink, forearm
levered against my throat, flexing
the needle-nose pliers in one hand.
He and Ant examine the hole in my head
where the pencil lead snapped off, blood
leaking down my temple
and pooling in my ear. I squirm
and Mike presses harder. Hold still.
I know how to do this.
Edgar Kunz is a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. His poems appear in AGNI, Narrative, Gulf Coast, Missouri Review, Indiana Review, Best New Poets 2015, and others. His work has been supported by the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Academy of American Poets, and Vanderbilt University where he earned his MFA. He lives in Oakland, California.