My brain more tilt
than opening.
I am in a store
buying bread
with my mother.
The long aisles
of my memory
surface unexpectedly.
A friend’s body unwinds itself.
In the slowest of panic.
I’m tired of hearing.
I don’t write anymore
but hold each pose
like a fence of lights.
In the operating room
my body’s theatre
sliced open to applause.
When I wake
there are enough
miniature clothes
for a baby and a dog.

Carrie Bennett is a Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellow and author of biography of water, The Land Is a Painted Thing, and several chapbooks from dancing girl press. Her third book, Lost Letters and Other Animals,will be published by Black Lawrence Press in early 2021. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals including Boston Review, Caketrain, Denver Quarterly, and jubilat. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and currently teaches writing at Boston University. She lives with her husband and daughter in Somerville, MA.
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