This is the place that emptied
my father, sucking him
through the tunnel of its straw.
Four days into a farewell
visit, I’ve overdosed
on sunlight, rousing the insomniac within.
The grass is gravid
with alligators; the air poses
as sand; cars scaffold
a melted wax of spent bugs.
Everywhere, I see darkness
edging, shadows twitching
to keep pace—the gloom
that magics the glass into mirror.

Jessica Noyes McEntee is a fiction instructor at Westport Writers’ Workshop in Connecticut and a graduate of Amherst College. Her debut chapbook, Jackie O. Suffers Two Husbands, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2019.