Kimberly Ann Priest

Intermission

My husband jostles the lamp,
frustrated with the damn switch that only works part time. 

My mother’s lamp, I ask him to be gentle with it
please, its shade half-cocked and feathery. 

In the morning,
sunlight splits the surface of a pool of humidity
in the center of the bedroom, dust particles floating
like a dispersed school of minnows.

I watch their ephemeral bodies dance
in a saturated sea and become aware of my own breathing,
now alone. Outside,

the grass is not moving; there is no breeze.

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Kimberly Ann Priest is the author of Slaughter the One Bird, finalist in the American Best Book Awards, and chapbooks The Optimist Shelters in Place, Parrot Flower and Still Life. She is an associate poetry editor for Nimrod International Journal of Prose and Poetry and assistant professor at Michigan State University.