And now
I can’t compose a poem
as I hide in the closet of the empty house
though that isn’t the reason: sparrows
murdering me with song, enormous
rainclouds painting the sky
the color of ash
Children whose names I write
race up Mordor’s Mountain of Doom
randomly free fall
inside my closet
Half eaten pencils in the place of food
and in the place of my hand
a quieted sparrow
Sarah Wetzel is the author of the chapbook, Elegies of Herons, just released from Black Sunflowers Poetry Press. She is also the author of several poetry collections, most recently The Davids Inside David, from Terrapin Books, as well as River Electric with Light, published by Red Hen Press, and Bathsheba Transatlantic, which won the Philip Levine Prize for Poetry and was published by Anhinga Press. When not shuttling between her geographic loves—Rome and Manhattan—Sarah is Publisher/Editor at Saturnalia Books and a PhD Candidate in Comparative Literature in the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City. www.sarahwetzel.com.