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Writer's pictureHearth & Coffin Staff

Empty

By Jasmine Williamson


Editor's note: Due to formatting, this poem is best viewed on a desktop browser.



can I buy you a drink you

drank you ice-

bred thoroughbred stopped

for a bit on

the side of the road where

you told me

tourists take

shits then leave leaving again we do

this

leaving

so

many times

but this time you drove

me to a black

sand beach on your tractor and

is that a country song?

I think

it’s then I imagined how the ocean

sounded when that guy threw that log in

the ocean in

the story

my tour guide told

said

the city is named

after

the smoke

that rises

from the bay but it’s not

really smoke it’s steam

like out of a dryer vent you

do not have one but you said you will hang

my underwear on

the line in the basement and

mine will be next to yours and your neighbors’ and

that feels like it means something but we still end

up like that bell jar

in the museum

labeled “elf phallus”



 


Jasmine Williamson (she/they) lives in Cincinnati, Ohio with her two children, three cats, two guinea pigs, and a tortoise. She earned her MA in Creative Writing at Northern Kentucky University, where she now works as an admin in the English Department. In her spare time she can be found making art, traveling, or planning to travel. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Literary Mama and Sledgehammer Lit. and Selcouth Station. She can be found on the internet as @mosscollection.






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