Amy Beth Sisson

Amy Beth Sisson (she/her) Poetry has appeared in The Night Heron Barks, Ran Off With the Star Bassoon, One Art, The Shoutflower, and others. She is an Associate Artist for the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice and an Editorial and Special Projects Assistant for Fence Magazine.

The grenade in A Prayer for Owen Meany and other things I remember from books I read thirty years ago 

After John Cage

My father's house has many rooms 

Upstairs is an attic

The floor a single layer

Pine planking

The joins worked loose

Through the gaps

I can see the story below

Ahead is a door

I enter a room never seen 

Though I have inhabited 

this house my entire life

There is a mattress but no frame

With covers but unmade

My old hips don’t let me 

fold myself far enough

to crawl into bed  even

If I did manage to accordion

I would need help to rise

and I am alone

There is another door

Another room I've never seen

Full of folding tables

covered with cloth

Each arrayed with objects

Like gifts before a wedding

In front of each object is a stiff cream card

And on each card is his barely 

legible scrawl

Each a cobweb

 Semester 

As children

we muttered jokes

about sagging flesh

in the locker room showers 

Our cupped hands hiding our mouths

Our heads leaning towards the naked old woman 

who was probably the age 

I am now

After swimming

we swung the doors

eyes red

blinked by the sun

and skipped down the hill 

below the old Ware Pool

now swallowed by the

new Lang Hall

The angle extended 

our moment through the air 

from takeoff to landing

Or we lay down

on the grass

folded our arms across our hearts

and pushed our weight 

to start down the long roll

Our swimsuits and chlorined hair

collected burrs and twigs

Primates picking 

through each other's fur