Issue Thirty-Three - Winter 2019

My House of Refugees

By Eugenie Simpson

In the kitchen a stew
of chickpeas and county corn
cassia bark and chicharron
plantain yam
crumbly cheese and bitter asafoetida.

The garden bed is all askew
some seeds blown in
from who knows where
grow striped leaves
and with a flag of painted fern
foment a color blur.

The sewing room spills
bins of cloth whose patched
patterns splice pieces
textured to a different use
stitches break at joins
where the weave is thatched
grains cross
fabric tissues heave.

Here
in the courtyard
of the brain a lizard
hurls its scissor tongue
and dices the bewildered air,
its tail is balanced for a leap
when the stranger seems to stare.

Hermetic seals burst.
Nations wound
by wandering seas
country family thoughts
all churning.
Remember the flat world?
And now the great wheel turning…

Copyright Simpson 2019

Eugenie Simpson lives and writes in Bellingham, Washington, where she enjoys the good company of many fine writers. She writes often writes on themes of embodiment and mortality, spiritual hungers. Her work has been published in cold drill, Billie Murray Denny Poetry Contest Collection, Shot Glass and Cirque.

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