Lauren Gilmore

WHAT IS HOME IF NOT

after the fire / you dream about pulling the charred jawbone of an animal 
out of your mouth / & what is home if not the ship we put in a bottle just 
as it started to sink / praying the cork could hold us if we let it / something 
like that / but less alarming / more like walking into a red telephone booth 
to find the book I’d been trying to write / suppose the pages were blank & 
I answered the phone / & it was my father / asleep on the couch / or the one 
dream where the family is alive again / sitting around that beige living room 
& what is grief if not a place to rest / elevator door that won’t close or let us
go / something like that, I say / pointing to the pillow underneath your head 
place where our teeth once turned to gifts overnight / & what is magic if not 
a constant state of tourism / sitting by the spokane river I sink one stone / then 
another / & I am back / watching the thames down itself / thinking to be young
& alone in london / is not the same / as being young & alone in london


Lauren Gilmore is a poet from Spokane, Washington. Her first full-length collection was published by University of Hell Press in 2015, and her work has appeared in various publications, including Pontoon and Lilac City Fairy Tales.