Born and raised in North Dakota, Madelyn Camrud is a graduate of the University of North Dakota with degrees in visual arts and English. She’s had three full collections published: This House Is Filled With Cracks and Oddly Beautiful, New Rivers Press; and Songs of Horses and Lovers, NDSU Regional Studies Press, 2013. Her poems have appeared in Painted Bride Quarterly, The Round, Soundings East, Water~Stone Review, Third Wednesday, Chaffin Journal, Edify Fiction, Virginia Normal, and New Millenium Writings, among others.

Outside the Frame
By Madelyn Camrud

After supper: dishes done,
children grown, partners of their own;
gone after a visit. Sunday night

couple, dishes done, house
quiet, they sit on the sofa
not talking: what is there to say
  after fifty years together?

If you look at this picture
and you don’t know better,
you might think they are unhappy.

How could you know his shoulder is
touching hers, might not have
noticed how he leaned close
and kissed her high, near
her ear, his kiss no more than
a whisper.