By A. Loudermilk

Opening Up Again

(June 2020)

I worry honestly

that I've not missed my friends,

inappropriately satisfied

in my oblong homebody—whatever grudge

I hold against the outside world

hanging limp from a closet peg-rack. Until now. I got your invitation.

Oh patio hellfire.

Oh toilet plume aerosol.

Listen as a spell breaks, chirping

its toll up and down every one-way aisle.

No hug is the new hug.

When I say I don't miss my friends it's not really true.

My problem is I always dread what I look forward to.

And who among us can say we're not asymptomatic?

A. Loudermilk’s Strange Valentine won the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award, with individual poems in publications like Cream City Review, Gargoyle, Smartish Pace, Packingtown Review, and Tin House. His essays can be found in The Midwest Quarterly, PopMatters, and the Journal of International Women’s Studies. He’s taught creative writing at Hampshire College in Amherst and MICA (Maryland Institute College of Arts) in Baltimore.