By Erin Redfern

Featured Art: Untitled by Olivia Juenger

My husband rips off his sleeping bag, strips.
With blind hands I trace his thigh and find

the big tick bedded deep. To get it out
I take tender from touch, love from love.

Forget him, and work at working it free,
tugging gently at the hard tag, careful

as my mother when I was seven
and came home lice-infested. Lamplight warm

on my head, and her fingers, for once, patient,
parting the fine strands with a metal comb

while I held still, not wanting it to end.
In the cold tent we do full-body checks

by flashlight. Engrossed, removed. Slowly               
the bright circle excludes us, brings us in view.

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Erin Redfern’s work has recently appeared in Rattle, The Hopkins Review, New World Writing, and The Massachusetts Review. She earned her PhD at Northwestern University, where she was a Fellow at the Searle Center for Teaching Excellence. She has served as poetry judge for the San Francisco Unified School District’s Arts Festival and a reader for Poetry Center San Jose’s Caesura and DMQ Review. She teaches poetry classes and workshops online. www.erinredfern.net.