Two Poems by Catherine Wright

Image Credit: Max van den Oetelaar obtained and licensed through Unsplash

Bare Room

a couple of bad brownies crushed me to the top
on a thursday in early december
the dorm room smelled like decaying spiced oranges
and i spent the next four hours slashing and spinning
and i spent the next six months hovering and hanging

i was sent to the top of a high glass tank, all windows, no floor
the world distorted and swimming in clear grease.
the oil on the windows slides onto my palms
and howls with me when i rub the glass
i pound it with empty fists fruitlessly

sometimes life changes like a clumsy gardener who
propagates a leaf, snapping healthy viridescence
unceremoniously and irrevocably
and, ultimately, incorrectly
in the glass lighthouse, i tantrum for my healthy plants

here, the hours leak out of me
like milk out the side of a warped carton
and here, trapped in this tower,
the lard sinks into my face as i beat the air
spasmodic dysphonia in a soundproof room

coming out (good)

i had a dream that my sister, outlined in bubblegum pink oil pastel, came out as gay. eyes tired
and gray the way mine looked after the night i cried [silently] into the telephone static to that
girl, Anna, “sorry/too hard/bye.” eyes watering like mine did at dinner after that call, my mom,
who lets the soft pages of her sorrel-colored bookstore bible lap at the toes of her shame like
waves, asking “why.” she didn’t ask “why” the way she asks my sister when she cries (her sins
are soft, white, and small. you can roll them in your hands like pieces of tender gnocchi) my
tears were radioactive, leaving crusted acid rain tracks, brimstone on my plate. i had a dream that
my sister knew cerulean-haired Anna (like i used to), whose golden-eyed mom hugged her
harder than she hugged millennia-old words (words that throw bones to twenty-five year old
preachers, the cruel dogs). i had a dream that my parents loved my gay sister. i had a dream that
They would send her to the most alone alone-corners of prayitaway, usa (the dog kennel with
walls of Stone) was folly, paranoia, figment, that the fleshy blackred love strings pursued her no
matter how far left of “men'' her body dared take her, and i woke up with a paper-thin kind of
peace crinkling over me like a war-torn blanket

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Catherine Wright is currently an undergraduate student at Truman State University. She enjoys tea, sonnets, and her three adoring cats, who are named Bonnie, Clyde, and Thor.