Spring/Summer 2015
Exit Here
When you emerge
from the grocery store
the parking lot is empty
the streets vacant
the concrete
has forgotten you
You wonder if this is
the same dream
where you wake and the world
is gone
you wonder if the sky
is actually the roof of your house
and you are fractured
as always
and your pillow
choking you
you walk for hours
noticing how the trees
bend like battered women
you avoid the hairline fractures
in the sidewalk
hoping they will be spared
by your heavy footsteps
the day dims to nothing
the ruined crows appear
wrap their claws
around the sagging telephone lines
and finally
you run
still escaping your house
as you did in seventh grade
streets just as barren
the asphalt blessed
in the black of night
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Connie Post served as Poet Laureate of Livermore, California ( 2005 to 2009). Her work has appeared in Calyx, Kalliope, Cold Mountain Review, Crab Creek Review, Comstock Review, Slipstream, Pirene’s Fountain, Barnwood International, The Pedestal Magazine & Arsenic Lobster, She won the 2009 Caesura Poetry Award. Her Most recent book “And When the Sun Drops” won the Aurorean Fall 2012 Editors Choice award.