The margins of a genome, 
routing chromosomal ways 
both meager and mighty, 
featured and forsaken. 
A genetic lodging, 
a blueprinted barn 
of tendered tendencies, 
inherent eccentricities, 
a loge seat with views 
of all previous act’s actors. 
Silent fingerprints suddenly 
birth questions into being. 
Like a digital hound 
rooting out hiding places, 
reports bark findings 
to humans not always ready 
to fully hear or interpret. 
Proteins expose secrets 
of those who came before—
shocking revelations of 
cellular skeletons in 
blood’s digital closet. 
Traces tie fast together 
into knots you cannot 
recognize: undeniably you. 
With equal parts anxious 
confusion and excitement, 
you join the sordid mess 
of sloppy humanity’s 
sick thicket of broken branches 
within the forest of family trees. 
The barking grows louder; 
you awaken from cold sweat 
to unforgiving sun shining light 
on newly admissible details 
that alibis of years can’t refute. 
The evidence is damning; 
someone’s knocking at the door. 

Gary Glauber

is a widely published poet, fiction writer, teacher, and former music journalist, who champions the masked underdog while negotiating life’s socially distant absurdities. He has four poetry collections in print: Small Consolations (Aldrich Press, 2015), Worth the Candle (Five Oaks Press, 2017), Rocky Landscape With Vagrants (Cyberwit.net, 2020), and A Careful Contrition (Shanti Arts Publishing, 2021). He is also the author of two chapbooks: Memory Marries Desire (Finishing Line Press, 2016) and The Covalence of Equanimity (SurVision Books, 2020), the latter of which was a winner of the 2019 James Tate International Poetry Prize.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Another Bad Year for Florida Man, poem in Issue 1 of MacQ (January 2020) which we nominated for Best of the Net 2020

⚡ Two Poems in Cultural Weekly (16 May 2018): “The Unearthing” and “Luggage”

⚡ A Capitol Idea, micro-fiction in KYSO Flash (Issue 12, Summer 2019)

⚡ The Sum of Three Parts During a Humdinger, micro-fiction in KYSO Flash (Issue 12, Summer 2019)