Alicia Mountain
Eggshell
I used to write a lot
about craigslist furniture.
I think I was trying
to build a life.
I got stood up for brunch
yesterday. It was so shocking
I didn’t even get mad,
I got all all your desires
are sacred about it.
If you don’t want to
arrive then you don’t,
you know?
I’ve been there before—
waking up late
next to someone new.
Now I’m a little mad
and letting it scab over.
They were the best pancakes
I’ve ever ever eaten
and I ate them alone.
I’ve lived here for
2 ½ years and the place
is still half-painted.
I keep waiting for someone
to come be the other half.
I don’t know yet what color
they will want the walls.
Alicia Mountain reads “Eggshell”
Alicia Mountain is the author of Four in Hand (BOA 2023) and High Ground Coward (Iowa 2018), which won the Iowa Poetry Prize. She is a lesbian poet living in New York where she teaches in the Writer’s Foundry MFA Program at St. Joseph’s University in Brooklyn. Keep up with her at https://twitter.com/higroundcoward