Joellen Craft

You will open, you will flap loose

You’re made to keep dirt out,
keep clean the queen pillowtop
hurtling toward our room,
but you fail. Maybe you split
when the warehouse men
sealed your lip, or you weren’t
made right, or the weight of the other
lined-up beds dragged your bad side
in the grit, but when the clear day
slaps you and keeps slapping you
wing from you, you flap loose
out across the parkway, jellyfish
until a car sucks past—the queen
borne off with your pinned half
as tires tumble you apart.
I hope another couple sees you, novaed star,
sees the man who waits by the curb,
waits for the break, waits to be why
you cause no wrecks today.

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Joellen Craft teaches at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. Her work won Juked‘s 2009 Poetry Prize, and appears in 2River View and storySouth.