Stephanie Keep

I think the star balloons were for a birthday party, yellow, red, and white candles on top, maybe a new pink bicycle, a mother worried about her daughter.

Benjamin Nash lives in Austin, Texas. His poems have been published in Louisiana Literature, 2River, Pembroke Magazine, Concho River Review, and other publications.

Opening

Stephanie Keep

The wind has come up again. It presses at my windows and seeps silky through earthquake-caused cracks. A slow drip of rainwater pooling on the windowsill inside. In the morning the sun will weakly glow through fat drops I shake from my shades.

I like to let a little outside in.

When a spider creeps across a wall and into a corner crouches by my bed

I converse, or try— he’s just passing through. “Aren’t we all?” He stays mum and still. I pat the rainwater up, offer him a smile.

Stephanie Keep is a writer living in Montana. Her poetry practice has come as a welcome surprise borne of long walks, first along the streets of San Francisco and now on the trails of her native Mountain West. In every creative venture, she's looking for interesting, not perfect.