Kathryn Ionata
III, from SHE WALKED NEXT DOOR & HER HOUSE EXPLODED

you know that photo
stuck into the side of a frame in the den
you know, the photo of Katie & Jamie on the stairs
well, we found it halfway down the block, black-edged but whole.
must have blown out with the force of the explosion
like a balloon out of a kid’s hand
& maybe two weeks later
you find a mound of popped rubber and string
with a boot print on top

Kathryn Ionata is the author of the poetry chapbook Yield Signs Don’t Exist (PS Books, 2016). Her writing has appeared in The Toast, The Best of Philadelphia Stories, Hawai’i Review, Wisconsin Review, Schuylkill Valley Journal, Aries, and elsewhere. She is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee and was a runner-up for the Sandy Crimmins National Prize for Poetry. She teaches writing at Temple University and The College of New Jersey.

Read more from Cleaver Magazine’s Issue #16.