No Solicitors

by Blake V Rose

For all you know I am a
Pink flamingo staked before
A double-wide in Kentucky

I am a no soliciting sign
Fastened to the front wall
Of a Sinclair in Wyoming

A glass of untouched prosecco
Somewhere moldering
In an Italian basement

For all you know I’m positive

With every cough
This shit is getting real

For all you know I am
The woman with an airbrushed
Shirt tied in knots
At the seams
Two feet behind you in the line
At your local Aldi’s

For all you know I’m positive
That you are too

With every public sneeze
This shit is getting real

Blake V Rose is currently in pursuit of an English degree at East Carolina University and will one day move home to Tennessee. He is proud to have fiction published in Alban Lakes Publishing, Hireath Books, and Adelaide Literary Magazine. Blake has poetry published in the anthology Under the Cherry Tree: 20 Great Poets in Their 20’s. Sulochana Mahe is an artist based in India’s former French outpost, Mahe. She dissolves herself day in, day out in social work, and art. Her work includes teaching painting to cancer patients, helping them overcome their sense of being doomed. She taught art to 150 prisoners at the Central Prison, Kannur, moving their minds to the softer sides of life. Teaching art to women at a care home in Thalassery gives her joy that colors can’t.