Cambridge Elementary
Rent from DeepDyve- Cambridge Elementary
The subterranean cafeteria’sdill pickles sliced longwaysto 1/8th inch thickwere green translucentpromises to be born intosomething else again.Severed with a dull schoolknife, both ends of a picklebecame tongues.Gremlins, alligators,slippery enemies of Supermanslurped with such tongues.All through fourth grade,at the end of lunch we threewould slip a picklebetween our pale-pinkplastic retainersand the roofs of our mouthsbefore filing out of thatfluorescent cavern intotorporous afternoonsparked at our desks,fed on fractions and grammar,starved for a fire drillor better, a fire,sucking secretly,for hours, on our deliciouslybitter ends. [End Page 134]
Kathleen Winter ’s second book, I will not kick my friends, won the 2017 Elixir Poetry Prize and will be published in 2018. Her poems are forthcoming in AGNI, Michigan Quarterly Review, New Statesman, Yale Review, 32 Poems, Volt and Western Humanities Review. She has received residency fellowships from the Dobie Paisano Ranch, Austin; Dora Maar House, Provence; the James Merrill House; Cill Rialaig Retreat, Ireland; and Vermont Studio Center. She received the 2014 Rochelle Ratner Memorial Award and the 2016 Poetry Society of America Emily Dickinson Award.
