I am yellow fingers swabbing
your face at dawn and a ghost
breath blown on your wife’s neck
when she’s alone. Just try and keep me
out. I wither houseplants,
settle in the little berries of your infant’s
lungs. Not even the spirits you pour
so generously will wash my phlegm
from the back of your throat.
That creeping premonition
that follows you, soot grazing
your cheeks like rotted snow?
That’s me. Go ahead and fire
your gun. Startle the ducks, all squawk
and wing. I thicken like cold soup.
I cling for weeks, streets you’ve known
your whole life turning strange
maze. Hands out, calling a name
I wipe from your tongue.
Corinna McClanahan Schroeder is the author of the poetry collection Inked, winner of the 2014 X. J. Kennedy Poetry Prize. She is the recipient of an AWP Intro Journals Award and a Walter E. Dakin Fellowship from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and her poetry appears or is forthcoming in such journals as Blackbird, The Gettysburg Review, The Los Angeles Review, Pleiades, and Poet Lore. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Mississippi and is currently a PhD candidate in Creative Writing and Literature at the University of Southern California.
