Erica Goss

 Where She Belongs
  
  
 I pace the denuded streets, counting 
 the humans who scurry by, their little skull 
 faces aglow. Mornings are light-struck & female. 
 Afternoons jumbled & loose. I try to remember
 why I decided to quit drinking. That last
 drink is like a tattoo: its outline grows fainter 
 with time but never completely fades. The body 
 is dazzling in its determination, in its daily
 reminders plucked from memory’s most
 trafficked thruways: the hour before dinner,
 when wine blurred the coming night; then 
 the blessed blackout of sleep. But this year 
 I’m neither sleeping nor awake. The mirror reveals 
 my sagging nudity. I’m quietly shocked. The body’s 
 deterioration: a road map of scars and lovers. 
 No cameras click, although I feel the whole 
 world watching. Once, pregnant, I was cajoled 
 into posing, my figure distorted and malleable.
 Never before had I felt so vigilant, so tenacious,
 my eyes ablaze with coming motherhood.
 Now excavation is my purpose. Instead of drinking,
 I dig. I’m learning to keep my spine straight, 
 but it’s not easy. My world, fenced-in & square-edged, 
 is still gentle. I don’t think about what’s past, present 
 or oncoming. No matter what, people come first.
  
  
 Copyright 2021 by Erica Goss 

Author’s Statement:

My poem, titled “Where She Belongs,” is made up of phrases and words from two of my poems: “Emerald City” and “To the Border Guard Who Found Aylan Kurdi.” The article I used is about the artist Alice Neel, from the New York Times’ arts section on Friday, April 2, 2021.

Bio:

Erica Goss served as Poet Laureate of Los Gatos, CA from 2013-2016. Recent and upcoming publications include Creative Nonfiction, North Dakota Quarterly, Spillway, A-Minor, Redactions, Consequence, Slant, The Sunlight Press, The Pedestal, San Pedro River Review, and Critical Read. She is the founder of Girls’ Voices Matter, an arts education program for teen girls.

30 for 30 is sponsored by Potomac Review