POETRY : Shelter In Place / Norma Smith

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Leave the lights on
so you and I can see
what’s left

After the to-do list is done for the day,
for the month, for the year, and 

A glass of wine or a puff of smoke
takes over. Don’t you wish

You were that clear-headed:
to relax your guard
between the clean lines

of Monday morning, sitting at the desk
someone else cleaned for you
over the weekend
and Sunday afternoon at home
strewn as always

With papers, half-eaten
poems, splayed across the bed,
bathrobe shucked and left in a pile
at the side of it,

So you and I
could climb between the sheets again,
clutter together, shelter in that

Dangerous place
we’ve spent the week
making ours.


Norma’s writing has been published since the mid-1970s in literary, scholarly, and political journals, including Race, Gender & Class; Feminist Studies; Nicaraguan Perspectives; Telephone; The Oral History Review; Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy; Isthmus; and Shocks. Recent work has appeared in Leaflet ; Pulse: Voices from the Heart of Medicine; From the Well of Living Waters; Tell Me Again: Poetry and Prose from the Healing Art of Writing workshop; sPARKLE & bLINK; La Bloga; Oakland Review; Full of Crow; Easy Street; and Poetry of Resistance.

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