Erin Elizabeth
JENNA
Their blue house was wilting,
the crocuses with which her mother
lined the sidewalk arid with contempt.
The electric company had come,
sheared the maple to a hemisphere.
Last year she had run
across the four-toned map
to Chicago, where the buildings
were tall and weak as toothpicks.
She lived in a hotel pool,
sticky with heat, lived in a shopping
mall bathroom, a twenty-four hour
porn parlor. She pierced her nose
with a thumbtack, lived off handouts
and back-alley blowjobs.
The day before they found her
she was throwing rocks
at the humpbacked waves
that shushed and cooed.
There were blackbirds nesting outside
her window when she was returned.
The gurgling song of wet hatchlings
fractured the morning. Not two days later,
her father ripped down the nest,
fed the feathered chicks to the neighbor's Labrador.
Life is just that way, he said,
wiping his hands across his dusty jeans.
From longer poem, "Deracinate : How
the Gatlin Sisters Faired the War"
|
|
Date of Birth:
|
March 7, 1981
|
|
Location:
|
Binghamton, New York
|
|
Day Job:
|
Student / Hollywood Video Manager
|
|
Email:
|
erin@sundress.net
|
|
Website:
|
http://www.sundress.net/erin/
|
|
Publications:
|
Pif, 2River View, Gravity, Agnieszka's Dowry, Disquieting Muses, Sometimes City, Eclectica, Pedestal Magazine, Avatar Review, Blue Fifth, Samsara Quarterly, Black Bear Review, etc.
|
|
Awards:
|
2nd Place in PSH's 2002 Poetry Contest, PSH's Favorite Featured Poet of 1999 (as Delree Rose), 5-Time Winner of the Anima Poetry Slam, 16-time winner of Insomniac's Asylum Poetry Slam, Contest winner at NakedPoetry
|
|
Current | Previous
Submit | Editors
Join | Donate
Links | Contact
Sundress Publications
|