Associate poetry editor Heath Joseph Wooten on this week’s bonus content: Camille Carter’s “Loose Thread (I)” wields its choppy rhythm to produce a spectacular experience that is at once ars poetica, portrait, and rumination on the undulations of intimacy. Like the poem’s title suggests, Carter leaves much to be chewed upon, many chords left suspended on the wind. This poem is fabulous, full stop.

Loose Thread (I)

you left behind

your coat

disarmed now

of its prosody

bonds of

water will

leak from

button-eyes

must I

sew-on

secure face

I must

make chief

go-to exterior

I am threadbare

when I’m true

I am, at last,

nobody’s keeper

and I admit

my childhood

dolls were

only pretty

bastards

Domestic,

my deficiencies—

last night’s

take-out

left

outside the fridge

A sweater

still

outside

hanging

helpless

on a clothesline

I wait for wind

to bring your ghost.

Like Penelope,

I married

vacancy

rufescent dye

worn on my lips

dies

at catching sight

of your mythic

non-appearance

the bobbin

wound of you

stuttered

at the door

the parchment walls

I paint red bloom

in lieu of you

will match

the wine-

dark of your

sentence

a house

is like

a poem

and

each night

I pull the

thread

It’s true, what they say—

wayfarers

weave

the richest dreams

each day

I wake from underneath

the blanket

of this prose

Camille Carter is a writer, poet, educator, and traveler. Her recent work appears in Poetry, SWWIM Every day, Cider Press Review, Cherry Tree, and elsewhere. She resides in New York, and is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature.

Tip the author on Venmo: @Camille-M-Carter