Contents Under Pressure
by Michelle Brooks
​
Maybe I’m another dead girl,
an electronic billboard flashing
my face between ads for Kroger
and Rent-A-Center. Maybe I’m
the voice in your dreams, the one
that says, Do you ever think of me?
And maybe I’m the wrong turn,
the road you didn’t take. Don’t worry.
It still had plenty of traffic. And maybe
you’re dead, and I am a negative
that nobody bothered to develop.
Michelle Brooks has published her work in Alaska Quarterly Review, Gargoyle, Threepenny Review, and elsewhere. Her latest collections of poetry, Pretty in A Hard Way (Finishing Line Press) and The Pretend Life (Atmosphere Press) were published in 2019. She has published a novella titled Dead Girl, Live Boy with Storylandia Press. A native Texan, she has spent much of her adult life in the city of Detroit.