Metairie I.
The moon in the curtains has teeth.
The clock blinks its only message. I think
about everything I have been promised:
What if the days won’t ever unstretch
themselves? Tomorrow I’ll push another
empty cart through the grocery store; I’ll
strain against the towers of cereal boxes,
listening for news. Now dim light crawls
under the bathroom door. The dogs
sigh and turn in their tiny beds. Outside,
the dark palmetto twists on its spine.
The yard slumps one more inch into marsh.
*“Metairie I.” appears in Tall Grass With Violence (FutureCycle Press, 2022) and originally appeared in Parcel Magazine.
RACHEL MARIE PATTERSON is the co-founder and editor of Radar Poetry. Tall Grass With Violence, Rachel’s debut full-length collection, was released in 2022 by FutureCycle Press and her chapbook, If I Am Burning, was published by MSR in 2011. Rachel’s poems appear or will soon appear in many journals, including Harpur Palate, Cimarron Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Smartish Pace, Parcel, The Journal, Thrush, Nashville Review, Redivider, and Fugue. She won an Academy of American Poets Prize in 2012, and in 2019, her poem “Connemara” was selected as a Special Mention for the Pushcart Prize. She now lives in New Jersey with her husband and daughters, where she works for the State of New Jersey.
