Sophie Klahr

 

TWELVE YEARS LATER

 

I can imagine the baby pooling away from me

like smoke, imagine doctors soft as birds

beating their wings, murmuring, guiding the dark plume

 

into a bucket. Into a bag. Then afterwards, smoothing

a sheet over me. No, a veil. If there’s such thing as a soul,

two flickered in me for years. Then one.

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IN WHICH YOUR WEDDING RING HUMS FROM THE KITCHEN TABLE LIKE STATIC

 

The conversation gets smaller
each time;

the word unplug comes
to describe what to do

with our affair. I agree and it is
as if agreeing never to pray

or sneeze again. My friends wonder
if one day I will learn to be angry but

I don’t want to learn.
Tonight your wedding ring hums

from the kitchen table like static,
and I put my shoes back on in reply,

to slip out into the green-black rain.
Take your shoes off, you say.

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SOPHIE KLAHR is the author of the chapbook ______Versus Recovery (Pilot Books), and the poetry editor of Gigantic Sequins. Her poetry, essays, and reviews have appeared in publications such as Ploughshares, The Rumpus, The Normal School, Gulf Coast, and Sycamore Review, among others She teaches poetry in the Creative Writing department at Houston’s High School for Performing Arts.

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Read more by Sophie Klahr

 
Poem at Connotation Press
Poem at Revolver 
Poem at Mead
Author’s Website