Barbra Nightingale is the author of the poetry collection Singing in the Key of L, winner of the 1999 Stevens Poetry Manuscript Award, and Greatest Hits, a chapbook of twelve poems spanning twenty years. Her book Two Voices, One Past (2010), a collection of poems in her mother’s voice and her own, was a runner-up in the Yellow Jacket Press annual chapbook contest, and she was also a finalist in Narrative’s First Annual Poetry Contest. Nightingale is a professor of English, literature, and poetry at Broward College, Florida.

Perhaps an Albatross

by Barbra Nightingale

I open my eyes
and you are wrestling
an alligator, teeth
strung ’round your neck,
bare chest sprouting
the same zigzag scar
from throat to clavicle,
a telltale heart.

People on couch
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