HOME/SHELTER/VIEW
two lit windows across the way and a scream
from a child below
door bells ringing in my apartment
and the apartments all around me
a masked neighbor touches our shared
door knob on the gate to the lot
I wait and say, “you go first, just let it slam, that way I don’t breathe on you”
two blocks away, the lake
has taken what it wants
water covers the beaches and sidewalks
all the way up to the painted benches
my toddler tries to run into the lake
where it overtakes the path and the prairie grass
people in masks take photos and videos
to show it really did erode overnight
we all gawk six feet apart
while my daughter shovels sand
where there should be concrete
when I get home, more emails
saying workers need ER visits covered
and my daughter draws me an endless spiral
meanwhile, all the normal emergencies
continue to accrue
as people eat too much sugar and
continue to drink to the point of black outs
today my mother called to say
someone shot off my brother’s ear
AS WE MOVE THROUGH EROSIONS OF LAND AND ECONOMY
I’m at a loss for how to hold you better
so I know this is home
your smile a roving chandelier among the pinecones
our bed a place to keep your laugh
when not airing it out at the beach
you jump into the watery divide
dance shifting borders of sand meeting water
new delights and new terrors
all the invisible edges rush to meet you
in your simple acts
there are windows outside of us a language spoken between two worlds
when you say “something else”
I know you mean “unutterable ecstasy of
untold play”
where someone else
just hands you a ball
or a new drink
they’re not wrong, they just don’t see all the other balls
in existence
but I do
but I do
when we look back into the night
we see the list of names waiting for us
to say them:
bath
stars
book
and we could be anywhere
the hearth of the
woods
the lip of our
space
Dawn Tefft’s poems appear in Denver Quarterly, Fence, and Witness. Her chapbooks include Fist (Dancing Girl Press) and Field Trip to My Mother and Other Exotic Locations (Mudlark). She earned a PhD in Creative Writing at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, volunteers as an editor for Packingtown Review, and lives and works in Chicago.