Welcome to “Poetry at The Arts Fuse.” A new poem every Thursday

Makes You

You could say this was written to a certain relationship to

fake snow or plastic leaves from the craft store

trying to be ode but

all odometer & glue gun

smell of control over smell of exposure

makes you be like

science is my bestie because science

would never betray my interest in this diorama

though the diorama will definitely betray my love of science

in the first version I’m sniffing out attachment

to all things physical

& demanding

and in the second version you’re answering

with your own ambivalence

toward the mundane

I cleaned the oven

I washed a few windows

I watched the traffic light degrade

into a draft of light traveling

regardless of time

or color guard rehearsals in the opposite field

all secular & ritual & getting off

right here in this particular joy

studying mailbox installation in the middle of a recent century

the way it’s designed to open and hold just so.

Julie Choffel is the author Dear Wallace (The Backwaters/University of Nebraska Press) and The Hello Delay(Fordham University Press). Her work has appeared in New England Review, Conduit, Denver Quarterly, Posit, Orion,and elsewhere. She teaches at the University of Connecticut and lives near Hartford with her husband and their three children.

Note: Hey poets! We seek submissions of excellent poetry from across the length and breadth of contemporary poetics. See submission guidelines here. The arbiter of the feature is the magazine’s poetry editor, John Mulrooney.

— Arts Fuse editor Bill Marx