Leaving the Boxes
By Joanna Grant
April 15, 2023
April 15, 2023
|
|
The boxes, they mocked me,
there in their corner, gathering their dust, judgmental as a parlor aunt, clingy as any bad memory. Brittle old cardboard just holding together with dried-out brown packing tape-- dead letters from dead fathers, dead lovers, dead weight. But now I have, I have done it-- never thought I could, never was very good at traveling light. I carry enough, sometimes it seems like I carry it all in the marks on my skin-- my scars, the heart tattoo on my arm the little neighbor girl shyly tells me she loves, the dust in my lungs. Let the old boxes go, then. at long last in my rearview. Let the dumped yellowing scraps drift where they may. For today I have quit my old claims, I feel light, I tell you, I flutter, a wisp-- an air-kissed, downy, windborne white pinion-- |
Joanna Grant has a Ph.D. in British and American literature of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with an emphasis on travel narratives of the Middle East. She has lived and worked in that region for several years in her capacity as a college instructor for University of Maryland Global Campus, including stints in Kuwait, Afghanistan, Djibouti, Jordan, Bahrain, and Qatar. She has also taught in Kuwait and Japan.
Her books include her published dissertation, Modernism’s Middle East: Journeys to Barbary (Palgrave Macmillan); My Far-Shooting Apollo (The Chapbook Journal); The House of Dust (All Nations Press/Bang Publications); and Adrift (Alien Buddha Press). Best of the Net, Pushcart, and Best New Poets nominee. Blurbs by Daisy Fried, Doc Sigerson, Aaron Poochigian, and Stephanie Burt.
Her books include her published dissertation, Modernism’s Middle East: Journeys to Barbary (Palgrave Macmillan); My Far-Shooting Apollo (The Chapbook Journal); The House of Dust (All Nations Press/Bang Publications); and Adrift (Alien Buddha Press). Best of the Net, Pushcart, and Best New Poets nominee. Blurbs by Daisy Fried, Doc Sigerson, Aaron Poochigian, and Stephanie Burt.