what you said yesterday came to me today right after
what is this closet tangle of stuff? and how to unspool it?
the immensity of excess the word you gave to the thread
that strings together your life. so much fits into such small
corners of our living spaces. bags on bags inside a bag my
grandmother gave me. brushes for my cats in a plastic box
while their tongues prove better. excess & i thought extra, as in
scatter in the wind. but you didn’t mean waste. more like plethora
plenty abundance. enchantress stalking each street with so much
self-possession. i sort my possessions: discard the receipts donate
bags keep the forgotten treasure of the lilac fisherman’s cap—
wish i could locate it as effortlessly amidst my self-made mess.
nonetheless once sorted an oxbow body of water bends
through my forest of objects flowing with freshwater gratitude.
Sarah Peecher is a poet living and writing in Chicago. She was a Nathan Breitling Poetry Fellow and the recipient of an MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia College Chicago. She now teaches undergraduate writing at Roosevelt University. Her chapbook manuscript, KEELING (Finishing Line Press) was a semi-finalist for the New Delta Review chapbook contest. She is on the editorial teams of Frontier Poetry and Unwoven Literary & Arts Magazine. Along with writing, editing, and teaching, she curates work for Off the Page: Poetry Reimagined, a hybrid literary arts magazine and exhibition. Her writing can be found in The Lincoln Review, Agapanthus, Bluestem, and more. She lives with her husband, Eli, and their two cats, Rumpus and Ruckus.
