BURNING HOUSE PRESS

remember Hollow Man?      Kevin Bacon  

stuck in our seat forced     a rapist’s point 

of view     women can’t see him 

we go unseen     reliving through

leading to his neighbor     her apartment 

stuck in our seat     as credits roll

I should have left     before credits

still without closure     Rhona Mitra 

credited     only as Neighbor     

Dennis Etzel Jr. lives with Carrie and the boys in Topeka, Kansas where he teaches English at Washburn University. His work has appeared in Denver Quarterly, Indiana Review, BlazeVOX, Fact-Simile, 1913: a journal of poetic forms, 3:AM, Tarpaulin Sky, DIAGRAM, and others. Etzel is the recipient of a 2017 Troy Scroggins Award and the 2017 Topeka ARTSConnect Arty Award in Literary Arts. He co-edited Ichabods Speak Out: Poems in the Age of Me, Too with Dr. Jericho Hockett which features poems against sexual assault from the Washburn University and Topeka Community. He is a TALK Scholar for the Kansas Humanities Council and leads poetry workshops in various Kansas spaces.