21 August 2009 | Vol. 9, No. 2

Shelter #1: Husk

We placed it on the ground between us.

After it fell again, we rebuilt it.

The wind keeps gusting it into the barbed

fence. Holes are torn roughly, not cleanly

punched. We have to keep this between us,

on the ground. The house takes the shape

of its occupants. Ours was hunched

in the limbs. Ours tipped out of the limbs,

startled by the crowings in the wintered

tops of trees. We've pressed against it

for so long, the spiral of a thumb, a hand

scratched into, stuffed into, the underside

of a bluff: You were not the first person

to think of this. You were not the first one here.

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About the author:

Carolyn Guinzio is the author of Quarry (Fall 2008, Free Verse Editions, Parlor Press), and West Pullman (Bordighera, 2005), winner of the Bordighera Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in Cannibal, Colorado Review, New American Writing, Typo, and elsewhere. She has an MFA from Bard College and lives in Fayetteville, AR.

For further reading:

See the complete list of work by Carolyn Guinzio at 42opus. Browse the contents of 42opus Vol. 9, No. 2, where "Shelter #1: Husk" ran on August 21, 2009. List other work with these same labels: poetry.

42opus is an online magazine of the literary arts.

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