By Annie Schumacher

Featured Art by Jordyn Roderick

We drive six hours to a San Diego swimming pool.  
A padded bikini top adorns a deer  
trophy, buoys balance on the mantle.  

Blue balloons, stuffed pheasants  
in a fishing net. I place a gift bag 
on a blue tablecloth. After rehab,  

my brother smiles with ease,  
skewering meat on the other side 
of a screen door. Star spangled   

diaper cake, blue M&Ms in a wide- 
mouthed jar, gun safe in the bedroom.  
Kitchen towels from Camp Pendleton. 

Proud USMC Wife, Proud Mother,  
Proud Unborn Baby, Proud Australian Shepherds.  
My hair in the frosting,  

my hair in the fishing net.  
I follow the nameless dogs  
through blue wrapping tissue, 

decide on divorce with 
a paper plate in my hand.  
The baby, a murmur,  

folded in his mother.  
He will be named after a type of metal.  

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Annie Schumacher is a poet, writer, and translator. Her work can be found or is forthcoming in The London Magazine, Poet Lore, Apartamento, Poetry London, California Quarterly, and elsewhere. She has received support from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, and the Our Little Roses Poetry Fellowship. She is the Poetry Editor and Audio Editor at The Cortland Review. Originally from Fresno, California, she lives in Barcelona and is at work on her first full-length poetry collection. (from annieschumaker.com)