Don’t sit on the upholstery. 
Bedbugs and memories of bedbugs. 
Check to see if there’s food. 
Around his chair, sleeves of crackers, 
bags of cookies, peanut butter. 
Admit there’s no point to sorting 
pills he only takes when they’re 
rolled into his palm. Open the curtains 
to infuse permanent twilight with 
at least a ray of sunshine or faraway 
confusion of clouds. QVC sells 
panties on mannequins real loud. 
Memory carries me across town 
to check on my old flame but without 
memory, there is nothing left here, 
toothless addled cantankerous 
old fuck. I loved him so much. 

Elizabeth Kerlikowske

is one of the founding members of Kalamazoo Writers Disorganization, which presents monthly programs for writers as well as a meeting place. Her most recent chapbook is Falling Women (Etchings Press, 2022), with poems by Kerlikowske and visual art by Mary Hatch. The two are also co-authors of Art Speaks: Paintings and Poetry (Kazoo Books, 2018).

Kerlikowske’s first full-length book of poetry, Dominant Hand, is available from Mayapple Press. She is also the author of The Vaudeville Horse (Etchings Press, 2022), The Shape of Dad (a memoir in prose poems), Last Hula (winner of the 2013 Standing Rock Chapbook Competition), and Chain of Lakes.

She has been publishing her poetry and fiction for more than 40 years in such journals and magazines as Encore, Cincinnati Review, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Passager, and Poemeleon, among others. Recent poems have appeared in New Verse News and Autumn Sky Poetry Daily.

Her work is also anthologized in Nothing to Declare: A Guide to the Flash Sequence (White Pine Press, 2016); The Female Complaint: Tales of Unruly Women (Shade Mountain Press, 2015); two of the annual KYSO Flash anthologies, Accidents of Light (2018) and Earth Hymn (2019); and in the Michigan writers anthology published by Western Michigan University (WMU).

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ If my grandfather walked toward me with two arms, I wouldn’t recognize him, micro-CNF by Kerlikowske in Issue 11 of MacQ (January 2022); nominated for Best of the Net 2023

⚡ Into the Oak, prose poem in MacQ-9 (August 2021)

⚡ Tribute to Mary Hatch, prose poem in MacQ-9 (August 2021)

⚡ Three in Prose by Kerlikowske in DIAGRAM (Issue 5.1): “Forty Winks”; “The Girls’ Room”; and “Midway”