by Amie Whittemore

After Chen Chen


Learning the light
switches is the first
trick—each time

I palm the wall
by accident I stay
longer in the dark.

Then, where to put
the spoons and
where to put

my heart? Not
the highest shelf
in the closet,

not among
shoes shucked
by the front door.

Not below
my tongue—
that old home

its outgrown.
Not pressed
in the pages

of a novel—
never again
in her hands.

I throw it
to the cat who
tosses it

between
her paws
and teeth,

another toy
she mistakes
for meat.

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Amie Whittemore (she/her) is the author of the poetry collections Glass Harvest (Autumn House Press), Star-tent: A Triptych (Tolsun Books) and Nest of Matches (Autumn House Press, 2024). She was the 2020-2021 Poet Laureate of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow. She teaches creative writing at Eastern Illinois University and directs MTSU Write, a from-home creative writing mentorship program.

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NB: Click on the title to open a page which contains an audio version of today’s poem.

by Amie Whittemore

waited for me
at the center

of a frozen pond.
Beneath my feet

I could see the witless
gaze of frozen fish.

A low winter sun
razed the fields,

entrenched in snow
and the cold burden

of being alive
yet waiting.

The owl did not
spread its wings,

did not tap the ice
with a talon, only

watched me
equivocate between

praise and retreat,
its gold eyes

tarnishing me.

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Amie Whittemore is the author of the poetry collection, Glass Harvest (Autumn House Press). Her poems have won multiple awards, including a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Prize, and her poems and prose have appeared in The Gettysburg Review, Nashville Review, Smartish Pace, Pleiades, and elsewhere. She is the Reviews Editor for Southern Indiana Review and teaches English at Middle Tennessee State University.