Samn Stockwell

Samn Stockwell has published in Agni, Ploughshares, and the New Yorker, among others. Her two books, Theater of Animals and Recital, won the National Poetry Series and the Editor’s Prize at Elixir, respectively. Recent poems are in Poet-Lore, The Literary Review, and forthcoming in Gargoyle, Plume, and others.

A Constant Reduction in Volume Accompanies the Radio

I was very beset, that's what I said,
my throat swollen as I talked
to the paper stuffed in my bedside stand.
It's pine, the stand, some
of the varnish is wearing off.

A gray chair in
herringbone and stain
in front of a blank
beige wall - not from tea
or an éclair. Every time
I place something in it,
it empties.

Keyhole

I left Simon cleaning house regretfully.
He went to town for cheese straws and gelato
and painted the frames of the windows gold
and he was building a summer kitchen, a beehive of clay
and stone. He held hands with the progeny of the famous.
Here, he said, dealing me a plate of barbeque
and he adumbrated the causes of our illness—
our life is like a box with torn flaps
or more like a hat maybe -
you can wear it but it doesn't change the weather.