Karen Elizabeth Sharpe

Karen Elizabeth Sharpe is a poetry editor at The Worcester Review. Her poems have appeared in Catalyst, the Mizmor AnthologyBaseball BardVerse Virtual, Columbia Journal of Arts & LiteratureCanaryThe Journal of the Environmental CrisisSilkworm, and The Comstock Review, among others. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Karen has been a member of Marge Piercy's juried poets group and a member of the PoemWorks community in the greater Boston area.​

Exhalation

 
Chainsmoking in the backseat 
I touch the fire end  
to a new cigarette, inhale. 

 
        Tracy across my lap, eyes closed. 
        I tuck the cigarette in her fingers 
        light another for myself.  

 
Car windows cracked, cold air sluicing. 
Up front, her boyfriend,  
Jeff, grips the wheel. 

 
        Pewter countryside sews itself  
        together. Winter shivering.  
        This morning we skipped school  

 
drove to New Hampshire 
with $300 cash, the clinic  
two hours away. 

 
        Below closed lids 
        Tracy’s eyes scan  
        cigarette pluming. 

 
At 15, neither of us could drive  
or get an abortion in our state
without a parent’s permission.  
We never thought about permission. 

 
        Rivers of trees stream by. 
        We were twigs pale and growing  
        inside our dark bark. 






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