from The Bone and the Body
Laura Kochman
Originally appeared in CutBank (Issue 78, print only)
From The Bone and the Body
Available from Bat Cat Press (Square store)
Originally from New Jersey, Laura Kochman currently reads, writes, and feeds her cat in Philadelphia. She received her MFA in creative writing from the University of Alabama, and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Quarterly West, Houseguest Magazine, TYPO, Tarpaulin Sky Magazine, Artifice, and others. Her chapbook Future Skirt was released from dancing girl press in the fall of 2013. Keep up with her at laurakochman.com.
NB: The poem appears as an image because of its complex spacing, which Medium’s CSS will not allow us to properly code. If you are using a text-to-speech reader, here is the poem as text with commas in place to approximate the gaps in the lines:
I remember the story,
about the woman in the woods, in a house
with chicken feet. I remember the horses on the beach,
I thought I saw,
horses running,
a house running away. The beams of my house rolling away in a flood
of sand, crabs carrying splinters
from each rotten room.
Each crab is a key, to each room, each splinter a tooth,
that has fallen from my mouth,
the gaping doorway
