Cobwebs hook our lampshades to the walls. This barn turned home
boasts no copper flashing, still it provides shelter for the spiders
and for us. It’s the trees long-time residents tell us, leaves flap, spiders
fall—I feel haunted by substance and mine their webs for metaphors.
Gravel migrates over the threshold, tumbles the wide plank floors--
People pay a lot of money for their floors to look like that. Give me a cannon
and I will release confetti, a nod to joy and distressed wood floors. Our mailbox
lost its motivation to clasp, and our cellar hums with mice and spiders; they throw
parties, but never invite us. So we hang our wet quilts on the clothesline, release
our small sadness this sunny, blustery day. Our reward— horses queued on the road.
Suzanne Frischkorn’s most recent poetry collection, Fixed Star, is forthcoming from JackLeg Press (Autumn 2022). Her honors include the Aldrich Poetry Award for her chapbook Spring Tide, selected by Mary Oliver, an Emerging Writers Fellowship from the Writer’s Center for her book Lit Windowpane, and an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism. She is an Editor for $ - Poetry is Currency and serves on the Terrain.org Editorial Board.