In order to view this poem as the author intended it to appear, we suggest reading it on a computer screen or in the landscape orientation on your phone.

And so I entered a room
Marjorie Power

where I’d never set foot,
a hot in summer, cold in winter
sort of space, a two flights up café.

Afternoon light. Decorative little chairs. Wooden everything.

Laughter — the long time no see kind.
Clink of ice, clunk of fork. Smiles
that flashed: I can identify!

Among many strangers, one expected me. I chose a seat.

In that room I was a cat
in my ninth life, a memory of the self
who’d have recognized a face or two, at least.

There was a program, printed, some of us named, bio’d.

The young woman beside me — here from India for a post-doc
in Never Heard of It — confessed she couldn’t believe
she was sitting next to a published poet.

I forget where I was going with this.

—
Marjorie Power’s newest full-length poetry collection is Sufficient Emptiness (Deerbrook Editions, 2021). A chapbook, Refuses to Suffocate, appeared from Blue Lyra Press in 2019. The Atlanta Review, Barrow Street, Mudfish, Southern Poetry Review, DASH, and The RavensPerch have taken her work recently.

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Have you read these poems:
Life of Sadness by Johnny L. Wooten
Drifting by John Milkereit

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