Featured Poem: What was Left by Chelsea Rathburn

Chelsea Rathburn

What Was Left

The headboard to the guest room bed,

its mattress gone, the buckled frame

still joined to one unyielding bolt.

Three pairs of wrinkled dress pants

wadded at the bottom of the hamper,

six black T-shirts, an IBM

circa nineteen-eighty-six.

A snorkel, mask, and fins, white socks,

loose change, a broken film projector,

the television. Restaurant matchbooks,

tax records and old license plates,

boxes and bags of photographs—

Venice,Vienna, Cadaques—

the way that they once lived, the notes

and valentines sporting forever

and always, a jar of sauerkraut.

 

From Five Points Volume 13.3

 

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