Holly Amos

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At the Ex-Boyfriend Cafe, Your Mom

walks in, not realizing you’re one of the titular
ex-boyfriends. It’s a shock for everyone,
including your dad, who is also one
of the titular ex-boyfriends. Nobody expects 60-
year-old men in the kitchen or on the floor,
but there they are, sweaty as anyone.
Fingernails somehow scrubbed clean.
For one nanosecond, the air that was moving
clockwise shifts, just slightly, and an eye sprouts
from a potato in the kitchen as it’s grabbed by
another titular ex, who scrubs the skin,
somehow missing the eye. The eye has
been waiting for this moment, the one
with the knife, since the nanosecond it
sprouted, all of two minutes ago.
To the eye, that’s its whole life.

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HOLLY AMOS’s poems have appeared with the Academy of American Poets, Bennington Review, and elsewhere. She is the associate editor of Poetry and lives with her senior rescue dog near the mountains of Colorado.