I wake to a swirl of politics.
The air is bitter
the way chocolate is bitter.
I think of my childhood, where
it’s always October,
and my father is telling me
to stand in the doorway.
Instead, I dive under the bed.
I ask my father, Can the earth
really swallow a whole city?
On the other side of the mountains,
a hurricane assembles itself.
The streets of my town crumble
like coffeecake. A fruit fly
dashes across my keyboard.
Before she died, my mother said,
“I know I’m here, but I don’t feel
I’m here.” The earth trembles
like a dreamer’s eyelids.
Erica Goss is the author of Landscape with Womb and Paradox, forthcoming from Broadstone Books in 2025, and Night Court, winner of the 2017 Lyrebird Award from Glass Lyre Press. She has received numerous Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominations, as well as a 2023 Best American Essay Notable. Recent and upcoming publications include The Colorado Review, The Georgia Review, Oregon Humanities, Creative Nonfiction, North Dakota Quarterly, Gargoyle, Spillway, West Trestle, A-Minor, Redactions, Consequence, The Sunlight Press, The Pedestal, San Pedro River Review, and South Florida Poetry Review. Erica served as Poet Laureate of Los Gatos, California, from 2013-2016. She lives in Eugene, Oregon, where she teaches, writes and edits the newsletter Sticks & Stones.