Unexpected Visitors

1 Minute Read Time

This black and white photograph shows a brick house with a door, window, bike, and other things that are seen in the photograph. — Photo by Haberdoedas on Unsplash

                                                        after “The Guest House” by Rumi

The moon is nothing 
but a circular ghost
                             backlit, just disappearing 
beyond the roofs, beneath which
an arm brushes an arm, skin 
sheds its light so thinly we forget
                                                          we can see

And in our room, sleep
on the brink of extinction, sheep
out to pasture; their small black eyes 
               blink night away

How we fit neatly into our bed, 
studious slumber

Then the lamplighter lights the one lamp
                                                         on the fifth planet, smallest
              of them all, and meaning is electric; we prepare ourselves 
                                           to snuff out the stars,
the flowers:

This being human 
is a guest house

I welcome you, morning 
air, one-two-three

The sun, a fire-field, begs in 
at our window

I’ll bring you those moon flowers, 
a blind but gentle sheep, a single 
living star

Alison Palmer

is the author of three poetry collections from Broadstone Books to include The Offing (2024), Bargaining with the Fall (2023), and Everything Is Normal Here (2022). The Need for Hiding is her 2018 debut chapbook from Dancing Girl Press. Alison’s work appears in journals such as FIELD, Crazyhorse, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Cimarron, The Cincinnati Review, Rogue Agent and Columbia Poetry Review, among many others. Her most recently completed chapbook, The Missing Post Office, was named a finalist by Sixth Finch.

Currently, Alison has four full-length books, The Bird Calling This Evening to Another Bird, Proof, Phantom Animals, and Curators, circulating for publication. She is a poet, a writer, an editor (currently accepting poetry and prose manuscripts!), and a teacher. Alison recently moved across the world with her wife to Iwakuni, Japan, where she is beginning to lead creative writing classes.

Alison is a Pushcart Prize nominee and a 2022 recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council Independent Artist Award. She holds an MFA in Poetry from Washington University in St. Louis and a BA in Creative Writing from Oberlin College, where she was awarded the Emma Howell Memorial Poetry Prize. Alison also studied Poetry through Syracuse University in Florence, Italy.

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