by Rikki Santer

The precinct of my night’s mind leads me to a hidden door in the Airbnb Tudor that opens to the vertical power of heat, an empty holding cell for abandonment. Sprocket snoring swirls from bedrooms below, nudges these dirty crevices as early eastern sun begins its wake through a lone window to shiver cobwebs, to swaddle dust ghosts of chairs and trunks and sled that once lived there. Back home a package arrives from a library’s anonymous donation box three states away. 

I am recipient found in cyberspace and I am grateful for the browning, tattered pages of photo album reunion—so many smiling poses, birthday cakes, and tender embraces of extended family long gone, along with a scrawled Post-it note on the opening sheet, found in our attic.

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Rikki Santer‘s poems have appeared in various publications including Ms. Magazine, Poetry East, Heavy Feather Review, Slab, Slipstream, [PANK], Crab Orchard Review, RHINO, Grimm, Hotel Amerika and The Main Street Rag. Her work has received many honors including six Pushcart and three Ohioana book award nominations as well as a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities.  Her tenth collection, How to Board a Moving Ship, has just been released by Lily Poetry Review Books.