Elizabeth Threadgill


Sleep


in sleep every door is a lake
every door a prophet
sometimes in sleep children gape
mouths like small round cakes
the apparitions fall into
as children we accept this offering
mouthing dead light like lamps in the night

my mother folds herself into bed
the bodies of her children lamps
in night’s rooms, dark settling
on walls like wainscoting
the dead breathing in shallow
sleep, pretenders waiting for a stitch of day
to sew night closed again



Adrift


if ever a deer
you would be the deer
night is a deer
night is a blue cabinet
full of deer
if ever God cries
you would be God
the deep of voice
long adrift of presence
God is night
night is unable to connect us
concerned with nobody
beautiful nobody
you lying in bed
the future possibility of
spooling and unspooling
the floor is pooling
was nobody able
to save themselves
if ever a rift
you would be the raft

Elizabeth Threadgill holds an MFA in Poetry and a PhD in Developmental Education-Literacy, both from Texas State University. She is from Marfa, Texas, and now lives in upstate New York, where she is an Associate Professor of English at Utica College. Her poetry appears in Poet Lore, The Offing, Radar Poetry, Fugue, DIALOGIST, Small Orange, and elsewhere.

ISSN 2472-338X
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