Sharon Kennedy-Nolle

Cat poop in my shoe
into which I put my foot. 

The scaler (a hygienist’s gift), now so bent
to run like a razor.  

The paring knife 
next to the scratched-out glass etching. 

“Do you really believe I’d do that?”
fourteen-year-old you protested, hurt.

Never mind the spanner, candlestick, rope.
Never mind whose turn it is.

Never asked the real question, why?
Now I doubt every piece of evidence.

About the real culprit coming,
I hadn’t a clue.

 

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A graduate of Vassar College, SHARON KENNEDY-NOLLE received an MFA from the Writers’ Workshop as well as a doctoral degree in nineteenth-century American literature from the University of Iowa. She also holds MAs from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University and New York University. Chosen as the 2020 Chapbook Editor’s Pick by Variant Literature Press, Black Wick: Selected Elegies was published in 2021. Recently appointed the Poet Laureate of Sullivan County for 2022-2024 she lives and teaches in New York. Kennedy-Nolle has just been awarded a Poet Laureate Fellowship for 2023-2024 from the Academy of American Poets.