Issue 18 | Summer 2016

Picking the Lock

I try a bleached bird-bone,

a rutted nail,

my grandmother’s spoon ring uncurled in fire,

a sharp pine-needle waxed in resin,

the slim spine of his favorite book,

until he cries.

 

I ask the wimpled ghosts

if the key is a word

to place it on my tongue,

please, place it here.

 


Megan Merchant is the author of three chapbooks: Translucent, sealed. (Dancing Girl Press, 2015),  In the Rooms of a Tiny House (ELJ Publications, forthcoming 2016), and Unspeakable Light (Throwback Books, Summer 2016).  Her debut full-length poetry collection, Gravel Ghosts, was recently released from Glass Lyre Press.  Her second full-length collection, The Dark’s Humming, won the 2015 Lyrebird Prize through Glass Lyre Press and will be published in 2017.  She also has a forthcoming children’s book through Philomel Books.


 

Filed under: Prose