JUNE 2026: Judith Skillman (micro feature)

Artists from Maryland's third digital microchapbook run is underway! Read Judith Skillman's Another Evening here (it's free to download!): https://artists-from-maryland.itch.io/another-evening-by-judith-skillman

Judith Skillman is the author of over twenty full-length collections of poetry. Her work has appeared in Commonweal, Seneca Review, Threepenny Review, Zyzzyva, and other literary journals. She’s received funding from The Academy of American Poets and Artist Trust, among other organizations. Oscar the Misanthropist won a Floating Bridge Press Chapbook Award. Her new collection is Oppression, Shanti Arts. Visit www.judithskillman.com.

"Metaphorically Speaking" by Judith Skillman, from Another Evening

She does not break with solitude.
Rules remain. The dead are dead.
Don’t bother them
and they won’t bother you.
Do not try to imagine
anything other than giving
as they gave. Take on a body.
Let it go like a dirty sock.
Air in the windpipe,
a little rattle before departure.
Listen to the dead in person
or over the phone,
they wear the same melody,
speak sweetly of other souls,
are not fatalistic. Rather
matter of fact, almost anti-
philosophy. She does not disclose
or opine, this professor
who dined on lamb, who no longer
sips wine, yet is kind enough
to pay your bill as well as that
of the server who soon will leave
for another, better station.

//

"Already August" by Judith Skillman, in Another Evening

When my mother died, she was gone
for a long time and returned
to say out of the frying pan,
into the fire. On my pillow,
cheeks wet with thick sobs, I listened
until I heard you can’t beat
a dead horse. The days came. Heat
killed under-watered roses, hydrangeas.
Once-thick grass turned yellow
with neglect. When my mother passed
I learned how long the journey,
the year, the millisecond. Birdsong
turned sad. I was told if wishes
were horses then beggars would ride,
understood the two pairs of shoes
she took to wearing. One we bought
her when we shared a taxi
to the city, the other
at the Monday Market where she worked.
Who says a mother dies only once?
There’s the insect with green legs
on its back in gravel, some holy beetle.
Spiders knit webs to suit the distance
between umbrella and patio table.
I’m going back to school. I finger
blue-lined paper, buy Elmer’s, cut
brown bag book covers. A watched pot
never boils, she says from the kitchen.
I look for the short woman
who bore me into this awful world
that takes and takes and takes.

//