Linebreak was a weekly magazine of original poetry. We retired in 2017, but the archives remain online for all to enjoy.

Thanks to all of our volunteer editors, contributors, and readers.

Almost Refrain

Meg Wade

Read by Hila Ratzabi

The whole messy thing
unravels like a horse

belly, split open

and spilled. A wasp
nest, gristled angels,

it’s strange, how scared
I am–quick write

down, Ferris wheel.
Write down, ceiling

of bees. Carefully mark
the lover pulseless

in the middle of a very long,
high road we never see

the end of–my throat

falls right out of my body.
A moth’s wings before

the dust knocked off.

Meg Wade is the University of Wisconsin’s Creative Writing Institute 2014-2015 Diane Middlebook Poetry Fellow. Born and raised in the hills of East Tennessee, she has been the recipient of an Academy of American Poets Prize, is a former Poetry Editor for Sonora Review, and is currently Assistant Editor for an anthology of contemporary, rural American poetry titled Hick Poetics, forthcoming from Lost Roads Press. Her recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in CutBank, The Feminist Wire, and Phantom Limb, among other publications.