Bat House

ISSUE: Fall 2016

Turn out the light and I’ll explain.
—James Fenton

It’s where I’m heading
It’s what I overheard
The lines in the corner
The flaming word.

It’s what you expected
Your greatest fear
A chip in the teacup
Bills from last year.

It’s dark in the bat house
Beetles stuck on the screen
It’s cold in the crawl space
Slow quarantine.

Don’t lie to the drunkard
Question each doubt
Shadow the cat
Turn the light out.

If you meet me halfway
I’ll tell you what for
Where it begins
Open the door.

It’s the news in the paper
Same as last week
The sirens at midnight
Why you can’t sleep.

The dog’s in the basement
You lost the phone
The father keeps calling
Bury what’s known.

Elise Paschen

Elise Paschen, a poet of Osage descent, is the author of The Nightlife (Red Hen, 2017), Bestiary (Red Hen, 2009), and Infidelities (Story Line, 1996), winner of the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize. She is editor of the New York Times best-selling anthology Poetry Speaks to Children (Sourcebooks, 2005) and Poetry Speaks Who I Am (Sourcebooks, 2010). After graduating from Harvard, she received her M.Phil. and D.Phil. degrees from University of Oxford. She was Executive Director of the Poetry Society of America and cofounder of Poetry in Motion. She teaches in the MFA Writing Program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.