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By Brooke Harries
In slow heat inside, fan whirls
candlelight. I watch a film and fold
clothing. Think like a poem thinks.
Lately nothing blooms. The stairs shake.
A neighbor triple-checks their lock. It makes
my door boom. Home a place to wait out
power bills, tornado sirens. Low ceilings,
wood cabinets, nest-like. If I moved East
to wet Mississippi to be a poet, I am also
a depressed Instructor of English.
Shoulders cramp, stomach tight
as teeth. I’m bleeding in private, due to
the betrayal of my dental implant.
When I talk, words shuffle out.
I’m sorry to see them go. And while
I can’t fix other people, I can
reread Mrs. Dalloway, notice every
flower. It’s lonely turning bitter
phrases. I wish to be safe, not haunted,
not forgotten, make up for angles
my face isn’t pretty.
BROOKE HARRIES’ Brooke Harries’ work has appeared in or is forthcoming in Arkansas Review, Birdcoat Quarterly, Denver Quarterly, Laurel Review, North American Review, Puerto del Sol, Salamander, Sixth Finch, Tilted House, Volume and elsewhere. She was awarded the Academy of American Poets Harold Taylor Prize, the Dorothy and Donald Strauss Dissertation & Thesis Fellowship, the UC Irvine Graduate Award for Excellence in Poetry, the Joan Johnson Award for Poetry, and the Partners for the Arts Emerging Artist Award. She has an MFA from UC Irvine and is currently pursuing a PhD at the University of Southern Mississippi.
This poem is part of the online edition of Stonecoast Review Issue 22.
Photo by Anthony Tran