1978
Nicole Callihan
A glass-green glass with ice-tray ice
and the ash that hasn't been ashed
by a lover who hasn't been loved
the jamb of the jammed door
and my thumb thumbing a page
on a porch with its evening eaves
the stink bugs that stunk and stung
and those hairs I plucking plucked
to buy gold stars from the golden store
just a quarter for four nickel candies
to make my sweet tooth sweat sweets
all day we’d swing on the swing
that swung in the wind wondering
if we’d ever wind up any other where
Nicole Callihan’s poetry books include SuperLoop (2014), and the chapbooks: The Deeply Flawed Human (2016), Downtown (2017), The Couples (a novella, 2019), and ELSEWHERE ( w/ Zoë Ryder White, 2020). Her work has appeared in Tin House, Sixth Finch, PEN--America, The American Poetry Review, and as a Poem-a-Day selection from the Academy of American Poets. She is currently Artist-in-Residence at Asterix Journal. Find out more at www.nicolecallihan.com