from The Last Milkweed Anthology, Tupelo Press, 2025
Photos by Jeffrey Levine
from Stonecoast Review, 2024
BROTHER IN THE BARDO
By Cynthia Bargar
You on your porch-perch lookout, Quincy Bay
& what will they do with your eyes, blue-green-grey
like mine & don’t tell me they scoop them with a spoon.
Your undertaker, herding me to the special room—
it couldn’t be helped—unctuous. What does he know of you,
of us, of Solomon Burke? He didn’t watch you
piano your way through life. Never heard you.
Christ on the cross! Who appointed him bardo
commander? An eclipse of sphinx moths would like to know.
from Sleeping in the Dead Girl’s Room
“Other Cynthia” was published in Driftwood Press and “Three Qualms” in Apeiron Review. A few more poems from Sleeping in the Dead Girl’s Room with gratitude for the editors who published them, some in earlier versions:
At the Revere Beach Wonderland Hippodrome Carousel Book of Matches
Impetuous Tendencies Rogue Agent
Locked Ward Loch Raven Review
Haldol Rogue Agent
How You Get Here Loch Raven Review
Cynthia Bargar 