Cheryl Caesar
Sheltering Places
after Jobim
A box. A bed.
A house. A home.
It’s the shelter that waits
when you’re living alone.
A coat. A bag.
A phone. A Mac.
It’s your coffeeshop space
with the wall at your back.
It’s a carrel that’s lined
with graffiti you know.
It’s the stall where you hide
when there’s nowhere to go.
It’s the wind in your hair.
It’s the sun in your face.
It’s a nest in the bush.
It’s a sheltering place.
A skin. A cell.
A tent. A tarp.
It’s a chamber to hold
every beat of your heart.
A here. A there.
A me, a you.
At the end of the day
we are all passing through.
—Submitted on 05/13/2020
Cheryl Caesar is the author of Flatman: Poems of Protest in the Trump Era (Thurston Howl Publications, 2020). Her poems have appeared in The Blue Nib, Prachya Review, Panoply, Light, and other journals, as well as in the anthology Nationalism: (Mis)Understanding Donald Trump’s Capitalism, Racism, Global Politics, International Trade and Media Wars (Mwanaka Media and Publishing, 2019), edited by Tendai Rinos Mwanaka. Caesar holds a PhD in comparative literature from the Sorbonne. She teaches writing at Michigan State University.
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