Back to Issue Four.

Midnight Among Blinds

BY LIZ ROBBINS

Whose fault, now the living room’s turned
forest? The drying-of-wings fan. Speckled
plums in the nest-bowl. We sit with the
baby among dust woods, thicket of limbs,
tree-light-thrown shadows on the floor.
Which is what we are, floored, berry
wine and milk drunk. A cosmic circle
joke: shelter made from what survives
the flared, expired fires. Space so familiar,
we’re blind to soil. The baby goes
limp, tight fists loose, gold bud popped
along a vine, now zonked in a tree’s crook.
Somewhere in here there’s an unused altar.
Somewhere, an edible root.

Liz Robbins‘ Play Button won the 2010 Cider Press Review Book Award, judged by Patricia Smith. Her poems have appeared in Barrow Street, Greensboro Review, New Ohio Review, and Rattle, and are in the current or forthcoming issues of Barn Owl Review, Bayou, Cimarron Review, New York Quarterly, and Poet Lore. She’s an assistant professor of creative writing at Flagler College in St. Augustine, FL.