Allisa Cherry
Image by Cotton Bro from Pexels
Allisa Cherry grew up in a rural religious community seated in an irradiated desert in the southwest of the United States. A recent MFA graduate from Pacific University, she has just completed a manuscript that explores the way faith, family, and landscape are often reshaped by violence. Her work has received Pushcart and Best of the Net nominations and can be found in High Desert Journal, the EcoTheo Collective, and at SWWIM Daily, and is forthcoming at The Columbia Review.
Divorce
You are attempting to unstick a cabinet,
I am trying to back out of this room.
Husband, everything is in disrepair.
Weeds buckle the sidewalk. The faucet leaks.
We’ve droughted the garden by wishing
it could be greener. The end of our struggle
struggles against habit. In this desert sky’s
sanded tin each star must always be
screwed into its aluminum socket.
Shining immaculately is a full-time job.
I often warn you, you are growing dimmer.
Your fine crystal filled to the brim with rotgut
spills over and blurs our vows which are,
after all, only white chalk scrawled over rough basalt.
I will miss you, I tell my reflection—as mottled
as the full moon—shining in a copper kettle.
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