Claire Scott

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2020

Sheltered in Place

Claire Scott

Three months at home with kids glued to devices and I haven’t done a single Monumental Thing such as painting the living room where my toddler Magic Markered the walls, but I am sure they are Masterpieces and any day now the Guggenheim will offer millions for her scrawl.

I haven’t done a single Minor Thing such as clean the hall closet, but when I open the door the scramble of towels, screwdrivers, board games, Nerf darts, flashlights, odd socks and tennis balls stares at me reproachfully and I gobble a pile of Ativan or chug a pint of gin.

What I have managed to do is gain fourteen pounds grow my hair into a perfect Brillo pad and watch all 684 episodes of The Simpsons while managing to ignore the school emails with unintelligible instructions on how to teach quadrilaterals and long division.

Secrets

Claire Scott

You never told me what the doctor said I assumed the tests were negative no cancer, no foreshortened future so when I answered the door this morning a bit annoyed since it was before six and I was wearing my seen-better-days robe there was a grizzled man with a seaweed oar bandy legs, briny hair saucer eyes gleaming salt water dripping demanding a silver coin I said we gave at the office and shut the door his sea smell lingered

Later I saw you take a coin from your mouth and set it on the counter while you flossed and brushed terror knifed my heart, I reached for your hand afraid we won’t grow old together hear the cries of grandchildren catching fire flies in mason jars as summer’s shadows spread we will never invite the lot of them to Disney Land for a crazy, exhausting, exasperating, amazing, wonderful week I never told you about the visitor hoping he would find another man to ferry across

Claire Scott is an award winning poet in Oakland, California who has received multiple Pushcart Prize nominations. Her work has been accepted by the Atlanta Review, Bellevue Literary Review, New Ohio Review, Enizagam and Healing Muse among others. Claire is the author of Waiting to be Called and Until I Couldn’t. She is the co-author of Unfolding in Light: A Sisters’ Journey in Photography and Poetry.