Claudia Emerson Poems

Every time I go back home, my mother
tells me I should begin to think now about what I will and will not want - before something happens and I have to. Each time
...

There was no one to tell, so it settled
in the lines of the house, in doorframes, ceilings, sills.

In the late afternoons that followed, she heard
what could have been someone knocking; a cardinal
...

We didn't know what woke us—just something
moving, lighter than our breathing. The world
bound by an icy ligature, our house

was to the bat a hollow, warmer cavity
...

She had been a late and only child to parents
already old and set; none of us had ever

wanted to go inside that hushed house
and play with her, her room too neat, doll-crowded.
...

Some of your buddies might come around
for a couple of beers and a game,
but most evenings, you pitched horseshoes

alone. I washed up the dishes
...

I sent you a list of what I wanted, and you boxed it up carelessly, as though for the backs
of strangers, or for the fire, the way you might

have handled a dead woman's possessions—when you
...

This evening's study the anatomy of the orchid,
the greenhouse glows—jut of glass at the third story

of the science building—a small, tended jungle
thriving in its humid room. Wearing identical
...

One rusty horseshoe hangs on a nail
above the door, still losing its luck,
and a work-collar swings, an empty
old noose. The silence waits, wild to be
...

You always washed artifacts
at the kitchen sink, your back
to the room, to me, to the mud

you'd tracked in from whatever
...

It began with the first baby, the house
disappearing threshold by threshold, rooms

milky above the floor only her heel,
the ball of her foot perceived. The one thing real
...