Small Town
Listen. The rug is wet becauseI stood here. Becauseit started pouring. Becauseyour door was open and I wasunder a tree. Becauseit was raining. Because the rainand tree bothwere in your backyard. Becauseso was I. Because youweren’t home. Because I knewyou were bowling. BecauseI walk your road. Because your roadgoes by your house. BecauseI felt like a walk. Becauseit was going to rain. Because your dooris never locked.
Jill Osier suffered serious injuries as a pedestrian in a vehicle-pedestrian accident on June 19, 2021 in Fairbanks, Alaska. She is currently in the ICU at Providence Anchorage Medical Center. Please consider donating to the GoFundMe page that has been set up to help support Jill and her family.
Feature Date
- June 28, 2021
Series
- What Sparks Poetry
Selected By
Share This Poem
Print This Poem
Excerpted from The Solace Is Not the Lullaby, by Jill Osier.
Copyright © 2020 Yale University Press.
Reprinted by permission of Yale University Press.
New Haven, Connecticut
The 114th volume of the Yale Series of Younger Poets
“[A] model of clarity and of the powers of brevity, as well as, more subtly, a quiet but no less persuasive interrogation of what we mean anymore by words like ‘knowing,’ ‘confession,’ ‘story,’ maybe even ‘poetry’ itself.”
—Carl Phillips
Poetry Daily Depends on You
With your support, we make reading the best contemporary poetry a treasured daily experience. Consider a contribution today.
