SPORK PRESS
sporklet 13
Carrie Chappell

Quarantine Daybook #6

There is so much death in the middle of the day, in the middle of the

Spring light of Paris. There is so much death as I hold my head here

To the window like a flower. There is so much death in the middle of

Me feeling like a flower. When I move to the couch, deciding what my past

Is about, there is so much death. There is so much death that I get up and

Go again to the kitchen to lean my head against the window, like a flower,

Pushing my hips, like roots, hard into the cabinet. There is so much death

In the middle of my neighbor witnessing me there, not watering, watching.

There is death there, then, and, later, when my husband discovers an old

Beet in the salad bowl. And after class, while I wait for my students to posture

Like flowers in the bed of my chat room, there is so much death. In the middle

Of the daydream that online conversations nurture and touch, I feel my hands

Firming the keyboard like ground that could be stirred. There, too, is so much

Death. When I turn to my husband, asking, Why, why, why hasn’t it bloomed,

Pointing to this window or that, where our flowers wear our days and nights,

There is a dew of death. In the middle of him caressing the pots, those outside

And the pots of who we are, he questions, bloom? Yes, I say, before I put us in

The middle of me and answer, éclore. There is so much death, in the middle of

This day, in the middle of this spring light of Paris. There is so much death as I

Hold my head here to this window like this flower feeling like this flower.


Carrie Chappell is a writer, editor, and translator. Currently, she teaches at Cergy Paris Université and serves as Poetry Editor of Sundog Lit. Some of her recent poems are forthcoming or have appeared in Iron Horse Literary Review, Juke Joint, Nashville Review, Redivider, SWIMM, and Yemassee. Her lyric and book essays have been published in DIAGRAM, Fanzine, The Iowa Review, The Rumpus, The Rupture, and Xavier Review.