Julie Choffel

Lottery

When they cry
say their names.
 
Steely wonders
of an hour.
 
When everyone else writes the baby
is there even a page?
 
When they cry
change your face.
 
When they cry
make more or
less of it.
 
While the sky blues itself behind a cast of limbs
and I think about getting a look at it.
 
If the day goes sour
and cannot be recovered
by feelings.
 
When everyone’s crying
leave the room.
Is there a room?
 
The bodily. Proximity instead of 
fix. Those repeated motions
that make up love.
 
When they’re crying
eat something.
 
When they cry
the together dream
of another habitat
less habit, more wit.
 
Everything gleaned 
from one another.
 
When everybody’s crying
do not die
look into the sun
be the water
lapping your body 
upon another shore.

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Julie Choffel is the author of The Hello Delay (Fordham, 2012) and a recent chapbook, The Chicories (Ethel Press, 2019). Her work has appeared in Denver Quarterly, the tiny, Phoebe, Art New England, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Seattle Review, and elsewhere. She teaches creative writing at the University of Connecticut.