Spent three years with a view
of the reservoir, the train waking
me and the sun waking me, naked
and no one sees. I’ll miss
the brass-gate do-it-yourself
elevator. Fifth floor, end of the hall,
my door, crooked somehow,
I added a lock to that door.
Just one bolt wasn’t enough.
My landlady is selling and I’m not
buying is how it happened. Moving
to a place with more windows.
But mostly I loved these windows,
I’d be on the sill or else leaning on
the radiator, smoking five thousand
cigarettes. See no car of mine
parked in Resident Parking,
The window is where I’d watch
the unseeable worldly stars
though city lights didn’t give
the stars enough stage presence.
I loved using the built-in clothesline
in the kitchen and the pull-out
ironing board that made me love
ironing blouses, I had been so careless
with creases. I have more jars
than silverware, too few groceries
always a bag of coffee beans
to grind. Hot coffee every morning
whatever was left, I iced.
Alexis Ivy is a 2018 recipient of the Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship in Poetry. Her first poetry collection, Romance with Small-Time Crooks was published in 2013 by BlazeVOX [book] and her second collection, Taking the Homeless Census (Saturnalia Books, 2020) won the 2018 Editors Prize at Saturnalia Books. Her most recent poems have appeared in Poet Lore, Sugar House Review, Saranac Review, and Poetry East. She teaches in the PoemWorks Community in Boston.