Laura Donnelly

An Ordinary Sleep

I saw the spinning wheel
and wanted to play it,
wrap my arms around its spokes
like a harp.
Later, I felt
a tickle on my arm –
strand of hair
or an ant up my sleeve.
I dreamt of houses with warped
blue shutters, ivy tentacled
across eaves.
I lay half-awake
a long time. The room
close and hot. Thirsty.
Thirsty. It was summer
when I slept and summer
again when I woke.

Laura Donnelly’s first book, Watershed, won the 2013 Cider Press Review Editors’ Prize, and her poems have been published by Passages North, Indiana Review, PANK, Poets.org, Baltimore Review, and others. Originally from Michigan, she teaches English and creative writing at SUNY Oswego. She’s partial to crème brûlée and rhubarb pie.

 … return to Issue 9.3 Table of Contents.