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by Kelly Grace Thomas I wish we could talk about lonely. I come from a house made of women. Taught that men would be their shelter. Men that thought a roof was enough. Thirst loosened the tar. Peeled off each shingle like a wedding band. We live in downpour. Still no one mentions being wet. The centuries without power. Instead we overhang the memory of men who somewhere-elsed. I raised myself to expect men to leave. The Dear John of geography. Sticks and stones still rotting in my hands. The story rained so hard, it’s all I had to drink. Hope is the loneliest house on the block. It spends years waiting for a hammer. Forgets it was once a tree.  Kelly Grace Thomas is the winner of the 2017 Neil Postman Award for Metaphor from Rattle, a 2018 finalist for the Rita Dove Poetry Award, a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee and a Best of the Next nominee. Boat Burned, her first full-length collection, is forthcoming from YesYes Books in December 2019. Kelly’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in: DIAGRAM, Tinderbox, Diode, Nashville Review, Sixth Finch, Muzzle and more. Kelly currently works as the Director of Education and Pedagogy for Get Lit-Words Ignite. She is the co-author of Words Ignite: Explore, Write and Perform, Classic and Spoken Word Poetry (Literary Riot). Kelly is also a screenwriter and novelist. She lives in the Bay Area with her husband, Omid. www.kellygracethomas.com |