A Poem by Finalist Rachel Moritz

Pilot

Someone who tunnels down and away was other

My mother said, you’re going where I can’t be with you

As a glass idol fills its own presence with lack

The stairs down into each self—how one door

opened where the man was let in

Public as flame, the self with no interior

One hadn’t hearing for doubt in that place seen as clear

With him on the street, my spine was agent a world

extended into, sweeping a path

Sometimes coming back in dreams, that other kind of transparency

How our safety felt unreasonable, like I was doing something wrong

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Rachel Moritz is the author of two chapbooks, The Winchester Monologues (2005) and Night-Sea (2008), both from New Michigan Press. Her poetry has been published in Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Free Verse, HOW2, typo, 26, and other journals. She co-edits poetry for Konundrum Engine Literary Review, and also publishes a poetry chaplet and broadside series, WinteRed Press. Moritz lives and works in Minneapolis.