Karen A. Terrey graduated from Goddard College with an MFA in Creative Writing. She teaches creative writing in Truckee, CA at Sierra Nevada College, and is the poetry editor for Quay, a literary arts journal. Her poetry explores concepts of place and borders of community, seeking to create freshly unfamiliar perceptions, questions and experiences of familiar environments around us. Her poems can be read in Sierra Nevada Review, Pitkin Review, and Moonshine Ink. She also teaches skiing at Squaw Valley.

At first

     by Karen Terrey

At first,

she reached up to take off his glasses and she worried

about them, about crushing them under the alarm clock

while setting it in the dark, afterwards. She always secretly

felt that socks must be removed, and even

the ever-present watch as well, the wearing of them bad sex etiquette.

Now, she feels for his watch, but it falls elsewhere

within the house, before they reach the bedroom. His glasses

find safer havens behind the nightstand. And in the mornings

when he leaves, where before he carefully contained himself

within the boundaries of his fine body, except for the toothbrush

tucked under the car visor (once a boy scout … ), he seems

to be leaking. Parts of him appear

a few minutes after his Honda has pulled out

into the street that takes him away:

a duffel bag in the living room,

extra beers in the fridge, his red sneakers

in the back of her car.

© 2008 Karen Terrey