Junk Sick and Fruit Bowl of Soft Oranges with Barcode Stickers

Elizabeth A. I. Powell
Published on April 5, 2018

For Rich

The past week was draining
          I want to explain
It’s difficult to understand           because you were and are
          I get it now                        the energies in each
Opposite directions           I look at you and it consumes him           like Sunday
          Was consuming, but you know this—I bring it up because it sets the context,
the loss, the tone                that’s why I left on Monday.
I ought to proceed warily              slowly but clearly
The risk of getting choked up a week ago was inspiring
          Imagine leaving that— parts that work.
I used to think of my hands--- driving back, then
          disappearing again.                            That hotel room in Arizona for starters
You want to move on with life—
That stays with me               I’m dysfunctional at last
          It is difficult to feel                            my last therapy session
Was consoling but precarious—so much on that question,
          Other days – not so much
Because of the personal content               another mild earthquake in June
          Watching you put the ripened bananas in the freezer
The old light bulbs leaking a kind of mercury      I had wanted to go
          The scissors had blue handles and were sharp
The two hit me hard on Monday
          I am so full of bullshit
Even I’m surprised to hear this

Genre: 
Poetry
Author Bio: 

Elizabeth A. I. Powell is the author of “The Republic of Self” a New Issue First Book Prize winner, selected by C.K. Williams. Her second book “Willy Loman’s Reckless Daughter: Living Truthfully Under Imaginary Circumstances” won the Robert Dana Prize in poetry, chosen by Maureen Seaton, and was a 2016 'Books We Love' in The New Yorker and a Small Press Bestseller. 

A recent Pushcart Prize winner, Powell has also received a Vermont Council on the Arts grants and a Yaddo fellowship. Her work has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Barrow Street, Black Warrior Review, Ecotone, Harvard Review, Handsome, Hobart, Indiana Review, Missouri Review, Mississippi Review, Slope, Sugarhouse Review, Ploughshares, Post Road, The Rumpus and elsewhere. She is Editor of Green Mountains Review, and Associate Professor of Writing and Literature at Johnson State College. She also serves on the faculty of the low-residency MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Nebraska-Omaha and the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA in Writing and Publishing. www.willylomansrecklessdaughter.com

Issue: 
61