Annette Sisson

Hulls

At the cabin she brushes ladybugs
     from windowsills, pokes bristles
into corners to flick them free, pushes
     the ruddy piles of black-pipped
bodies into a dustpan, drops them
     in the trash. She suctions between
wooden planks, tiny beetles rattling
     the tube. In this battle, results
are clear. Unlike the struggle to stave
     off August—no more first days
of class, office re-assigned, last
     paycheck looming. What if her roof
comes unnailed, or free time sucks
     her into a sinkhole? What if days
have no walls, no clocks, no rays
     of crepuscular light? What if ladybugs
storm the room and she can’t clear
     a path? Windows will teem with
shiny dotted shells, slowly hollowing.

________________________________________________________________________________________

Annette Sisson lives in Nashville with her husband and soft-coated wheaten terrier. Her poems appear in Penn Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, Rust & Moth, Sky Island Journal, West Trade Review and other journals and anthologies. Her second book, Winter Sharp with Apples, was published by Terrapin Books (2024); her third book manuscript, Rhizomes and Bones, was recently the Runner-Up in the Cider Press Book Award. In 2019 she won The Porch Writers’ Collective’s poetry prize and dozens of her poems have placed in contests or been nominated for Best of the Net or the Pushcart Prize.