(after Mountain River by Lisa Curry, oil on canvas) My feet know the glass tingle of cold waiting there in water that used to be peaked snowpack, views of cragged horizon. Born in July, my body craves always sun-doused prairies and beach sand radiating from footsoles upward like a griddle. Tree- climbing brings my skin […]
Kerry Trautman
Kerry Trautman is a lifelong Ohioan and a co-founder of ToledoPoet.com and the "Toledo Poetry Museum" page on Facebook, which promote Northwest Ohio poetry events. Her work has appeared in various anthologies and journals, and her books are Things That Come in Boxes (King Craft Press 2012,) To Have Hoped (Finishing Line Press 2015,) Artifacts (NightBallet Press 2017,) To be Nonchalantly Alive (Kelsay Books 2020,) Marilyn: Self-Portrait, Oil on Canvas (Gutter Snob Books 2022,) Unknowable Things (Roadside Press 2022,) and Irregulars (Stanchion Books 2023.)
Unworn
I yank four nighties from hangers— silky slips too cheap to be called negligees, unworn since my twenties. I realize they must have looked pretty on me once, Like discovering you had been fed cake in your sleep. So many seamstresses and hot machines’ needling wisps of sorbet-colored nylon and black lace to fake my […]