by Jennifer Handy
In the suburbs,
everybody tells you
to study hard in school,
especially math and science,
so that you can go to college,
get a job,
buy a house
out in the suburbs.
And so you study numbers,
which are abstract,
silent,
colorless,
eternal,
the opposite of strip malls,
tract housing,
McDonald’s,
MasterCard,
a vacuum cleaner.
JENNIFER HANDY explores sexuality, psychological trauma, mental illness, homelessness, severed family relationships, and environmental issues through poetry. Her poetry chapbook California Burning is forthcoming from Bottlecap Press in Fall 2024 and her poetry chapbook Dirt is forthcoming. Her poetry has been published in The Closed Eye Open, CommuterLit, Last Stanza Poetry Journal, Loud Coffee Press, The Rising Phoenix Review, Wild Roof Journal, and the anthology Hey There, Delilah! and is forthcoming in Chalkdust, Nathaniel Hawthorne Review, Poe Studies, and The Wallace Stevens Journal.
Union Spring Literary Review 