but not the Virgin Mary statue casting
her smaller than normal shadow
against the front of the neighboring
church. Today is simply a day hidden
inside another day, a day of reprieve,
wedged between week’s end and
beginning—a day like a shadow itself.
And I am not bingeing on deities,
today, checking for them in mirrors
and moons. Today, I slip effortlessly
into quiescence. Grief, like an old cat,
squeezes in through a small opening
in the window and curls next to me
under a cozy gray blanket to watch
trash TV. I abandon my body
with all its questions. We lie together,
me and my wrapped-up sorrow,
content with boredom, in this thin
blur of life, far from premonitions,
empty of intuition and resolve.
Hollie Dugas lives in New Mexico. Her work has been included in Barrow Street, Reed Magazine, Qu, Redivider, Porter House Review, Blue Earth Review, EPOCH, Salamander, Poet Lore, The Louisville Review, The Penn Review, Third Coast, RHINO, Gordon Square Review, Phoebe, and Louisiana Literature. Additionally, “A Woman’s Confession #5,162” was selected as the winner of the Western Humanities Review Mountain West Writers’ Contest (2017). She was a finalist in the Atlanta Review’s 2022 International Poetry Contest. Most recently, her poem was selected as winner of the 22nd Annual Lois Cranston Memorial Poetry Prize at CALYX, in addition to the 2022 Heartwood Poetry Prize. Hollie has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and for inclusion in Best New Poets.
Image: “Daylight Saving, Troy” by Daniel Nester
Pine Hills Review 