All that time we were sleeping and waking, waking and driving
to work, turning off the iron then going back after a few minutes
and unplugging it just to make sure. Her black eyes are full
of the same worry, the same apology, as she circles her bed,
as she falls casually into the space her body has made over years,
which is her destiny. Again it comes to me: how the living
body can feel irrevocable, like a church, cool and well-lighted, a high
ceiling painted with tiny yellow stars.
Carrie Fountain’s poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Poetry Magazine, Crazyhorse, and Tin House. Her first collection, Burn Lake, was selected by poet Natasha Trethewey as a winner of the 2009 National Poetry Series Award and was published in 2010 by Penguin. She teaches at St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas, where she lives with her husband, the playwright Kirk Lynn, and their children.