Arielle Greenberg

 

In your wake, coffee grinds.
Something black & oily inside a crank-
box; something bean.  A germ.
Germanic:  a rule book (“you don’t
know what you’re like!”), a ruler.
Cracked.  Germane:  the fear you
left by the washer & dryer.  The pair
of socks balled in my drawer.  (Last
night, my panties stayed on.  Not my fault.)
Gray beard in the showerwell.
Soot in the kitchen sink—your
addiction, stunted, my drain.

 

Arielle Greenberg’s latest books are her third poetry collection, Slice, and the creative nonfiction work Locally Made Panties. She is co-author, with Rachel Zucker, of Home/Birth: A Poemic, a book-length collaborative lyric essay, and co-editor of four anthologies, including Electric Gurlesque, co-edited with Becca Klaver. Arielle writes a column on contemporary poetics for the American Poetry Review, edits the series (K)ink: Writing While Deviant for The Rumpus, and lives in Maine, where she teaches in the community and in Oregon State University-Cascades’ MFA.