Bold lover, flexed moth,
sprinklers in a stranger’s yard,

morning dream, lake smooth
as a dinner plate, father

praying, water under a pier,
mother’s hand, counting,

color of wet stone, ears
before piercing, sound of

father leaving, disembodiment,
a voicemail, routine as in road,

which doesn’t promise
regularity, as in rule, ruler

which doesn’t make a circle.
Dancer in the jewelry box, 

figurine, how I wished to see 
her sleeping, tried to raise 

the lid just so to soften
the hinge, to suppress 

music, to see the world
without artifice,

or in between, pinching
her to make her stop.

 

 

Cover Art by Seo Ryung Samantha Park

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Callie Siskel

Callie Siskel is the author of Arctic Revival, which was selected by Elizabeth Alexander for a Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship. Her poems appear in Ploughshares, A Public Space, The Yale Review, and elsewhere. She is a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University.

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