Deborah C. Strozier won 3rd Prize in the 2005 William Redding Memorial Poetry Competition. In the 2005, 2006 &2007 Ohio Poetry Day Contests, she won first prize, 2nd prize, two 3rd prizes, and three honorable mentions. She won the 1998 Janet Cicchetti Memorial Prize. Poems and flash fiction were published in The Bitter Oleander, Möbius, The Raintown Review, Arabesques Review, Hazmat Review, Heartlands, Ibbetson Street Press, and 21 other publications. In addition, poetry is forthcoming in Cricket, Miller’s Pond, and others. She currently works as a product development scientist in an international medical food company.
Winter 2007
Table of Contents - Vol. III, No. 4
Poetry Essays Fiction Book Reviews
Boxes
I knock. Sometimes you won’t answer. Sometimes you crack open the door and peak out with matted hair. Your dim eyes long to nestle in the pillow clouds and blankets still warm from your naps.
Another crash of a computer program. Another day without PhD research.
Six years have passed. You still won’t leave this dorm. Your shadowed view overlooks a dumpster; the scent of trash and darkened cabbage drifts through your window. Sunlight barely filters in. Cardboard boxes stack in walls around your narrow bed and desk. Boxes crammed with the past: climbing ropes, sleeping bags, cameras, worn photographs where my fingers still linger. Towels and shirts lounge on a bicycle. Somewhere lurks the yellowed pages of your dissertation.
I want to kiss. You wince and crumple in faded jeans onto the bed. You want the girls who whisper every day and night in sweetened e-mails; glowing white words sweep across a black sky, “Take your time. We love you.”
© Deborah C. Strozier