Deborah Schwartz

poet, teaches composition and poetry in the English Department at Bunker Hill Community College; her collection, A Girl Could Disappear Like This (Kattywompus Press), won finalists with Stillwater Press, Carolina Wren Press, and Elixir Press; poems from her latest manuscript, My Refugee, have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize

At night, you come into my bedroom 
as someone else’s idea of wind.

You threaten to shatter the porcelain tchotchkes. 

Still, as I take off into viridian-night, 
you jump into my mouth to settle in my throat. 

You tell me the night hit you on the head a bunch of times, 

       leaving the iron-ore of the bully-house.

Then you, with your night imprinted on yourself
tell me calmly that you are coming with me. 

       O angry traveler, dark night provides the dark gold way.

With all the babbling sounds around us, 
you are a spastic airborne fern. 

I give you credit 
for that translucent golden sheathe you built around us. 

       Thank you.

I give you credit for being a hatching doll inside of me 
with night the littlest baby of them all. 

from A Girl Could Disappear Like This by Deborah Schwartz (Kattywompus Press)