by Onna Solomon
State of Emergency
The dream woman chases her
empty car down the hill
She is me and I am
watching her
from my own car
When I reach her after her
car slowly rolls away
I hold her in
my arms
her body
fragile in a way my body
has never been fragile
I feel the edge of her
shoulder blades beneath
my hands
I hold her
breathe slow deep breaths
as her body
softens into
my soft body
She invites me
home
In her
small cluttered space
stacked with books
and sheaves of paper
I find
a child’s game
I am startled by my
nostalgia though in reality
I have never played it
Hours pass as I
sort through papers
until I realize
I have forgotten
my children
a feeling of
panic comes over me
When I wake it takes
a few moments to
understand it was not
a memory
the way I
abandoned them
to hold this woman
who lost control of herself
the way her body merged into mine
Poet Onna Solomon’s poems have appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Denver Quarterly, Hobart, and 32 Poems, among others. Her poem “Autism Suite” was awarded the Beloit Poetry Journal’s Chad Walsh Poetry Prize. She lives in Ann Arbor, MI. For more of her work, follow her on Instagram @onnasolomon.
Artist Benoît Tremblay aka BENT is a multidisciplinary artist born in Montreal’s Southwest Borough in 1975. In high school, he took a 3 years Art & Communications course, but still happily sees himself as a self-taught artist. The painter he is tries his best to create visual reflections that can disturb life, with abstraction and visual poetry.
Gulf Stream Magazine 