take the nearest last off
to the left stage show over
a marked door line
visitor handler exhibit
with animal guarded the barred
banned with child without
all of them gatherers gathered
or some of them citizens justices
unfit excluded except
closed no or into the open
air the way out will
not be the way we came
Martha Collins is a poet, translator, the editor-at-large for Field Magazine, and an editor at Oberlin College Press. She is the author of the poetry volumes, Day Unto Day (Milkweed, 2014), White Papers (Pitt Poetry Series, 2012), Blue Front (Graywolf, 2006), Some Things Words Can Do (Sheep Meadow, 1998), A History of a Small Life on a Windy Planet (University of Georgia, 1993), The Arrangement of Space (Gibbs Smith, 1991) and The Catastrophe of Rainbows (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 1985). Her volume Admit One: An American Scrapbook is forthcoming in 2016.
