Kirsten Holt

ANACHRONISM


Anna sleeps in the candled corner
of a bookshelf, keyholed and damp. Morning scars
the windowpanes with dust and when
she exhales
the lampshades purr in the key of A-flat.
Piled high the conspiring
wicker boxes mock the ardor of postmodernism while
the books spell discontent
on their spines. Anna wades
through the hourglass like a bog,
1994 sticking to her sweating
palms; she tousles April out of her
hair. Sagittarius is sitting on
the doorknob, resplendent
as usual, snapdragons spore from her
clavicle. Anna, weighted by an e-shaped sin, severs
the dictionary, laces herself into
the binding like a scarf, with a lung
full of Corazon she falls backwards off the fifth shelf
like origami
like a swan shouldn’t.

When the windows are open, you can hear
ghosts creeping through the carpet,
searching for her toes with their tongues.

Kirsten Holt is a college poet pursuing a Bachelor's Degree in Creative Writing at the University of South Florida. She has been published in Wicked Alice and the Thread. She pursues a love for multimedia in music, art, and photography.