Sanctuary
No point threatening us: we will not stay away from the boarded shack and its mice, splinters, loose nails, oily dust in our clothes and mouths—we swish through tall grass and the last bit of wild, ladder up to the loft over missing rungs, lean against the upstairs wall, dangle our legs, hear our hollow and hush voices, wonder who was here—maybe hunters in November snows stomping in, stoking fire to warm creek water for bloody knives, or a widow, putting up jam in the mosquito heat, calling in the dogs, or maybe just some kids, sick of home.
Karen Schubert is the author of the forthcoming poetry collection The Compost Reader (Accents Publishing, 2020) and five chapbooks, most recently Dear Youngstown (NightBallet Press, 2019). Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Carbombs to Cookie Tables: the Youngstown Anthology II (Belt Publishing), Postcard Poems and Prose Magazine, Rat’s Ass Review, Best American Poetry Online and Grist: A Journal of the Literary Arts. Her awards include an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award and residencies at the Vermont Studio Center and Headlands Center for the Arts. She is Director of Lit Youngstown.