It’s as if each morning were a pool into which
I have been lowered. Or I dove in and now sit
on my blue sofa at the bottom of the sky, swathed
in a milky substance amid the trilling of crickets.
A few minutes ago my husband clinked his spoon
to his cereal bowl, then stepped to the sink
to wash them. Soon the side door opened
and closed, and he was gone.
In my pool the dream of sleeping in a tiny room
whose walls started softening with wastewater
felt all too real. The truth is both milky and dirty.
The truth is he didn’t wash his bowl or spoon.
Barbara Siegel Carlson is the author of What Drifted Here (Cherry Grove, 2023), Once in Every Language (Kelsay, 2017) and Fire Road (Dream Horse, 2013). She is the co-translator (with Ana Jelnikar) of Look Back, Look Ahead, Selected Poems of Srečko Kosovel and co-editor (with Richard Jackson) of A Bridge of Voices: Contemporary Slovene Poetry and Perspectives. Her poetry, translations and essays have appeared in Verse Daily, Cortland Review, Mid-American Review, Salamander, Slovene Studies and elsewhere. Her poems have been nominated for Best of the Net and Pushcart prizes. A fourth book of poems The Current is forthcoming in 2026.
