No one can blame you for having a nervous breakdown, but now you must try and forget about it

by Michael Marberry

— The Evil Eye (1963, dir. Mario Bava)

Only in Rome, the paintings look at you

the way you look at them. Only in Ohio

would someone dream of living in Ohio.

The pub poured free A/C in Tuscaloosa:

what auguries. Never was I so lonesome

as Atlanta. You told me Tennessee is too

beautiful in fall, like German engineering,

which is true. But which is true? The way

you love me or the lake’s edge at Empire.

All the letters in the alphabet spell home.



MICHAEL MARBERRY’s poetry has appeared in The Believer, The New Republic, Guernica, DIAGRAM, West Branch, Waxwing, and elsewhere. A Pushcart Prize winner and former Creative Writing Fellow in Poetry at Emory University, he currently teaches poetry, comics, film, and literature at Radford University in Virginia. He’s originally from rural Tennessee.