Detached

I try the chair,
rock back until
the groan. A peg has
come out again.
My fingers pinch
off dry glue
and the leg
no longer fits,
too loose to stay.
Grandma left
me this. The divorce
left her another
place to sit. She kept
the rocker he
sawed and sanded.
I only met him once,
his hair a cotton field.
We looked at each other.
I did not know
eyes could hold
such iron. Grandma
never said why
she did not go
to his funeral.
Her will gives me his—
her broken furniture.
I find a tube of glue
in her bureau,
a droplet frozen
like a scar.
This whole time,
she could've fixed
it on her own, the chair
not the monster
deserving this.









Geoff Anderson curated Columbus, OH’s first shows for mixed writers, The Other Box, and translation, Lingua Franca. He’s a Callaloo fellow, and his chapbook, Humming Dirges, won Paper Nautilus’s Debut Series (2017). He has work on Tinderbox, burntdistrict, District Lit, and www.andersongeoff.com.

See more from Geoff in issue 4.1