Ash Goedker
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Grams Writes a Letter of Advice to a Single Father Raising Minnesota Child
If she maintains the dinosaur
is how she’ll deliver Halloween,
if she bawls a joke and misses
the punch line; if she dawdles
at all, she’s sure as heck yours.
If this Christmas she begs a real
stocking and tapered pine tree
in her living room, carry her back
to church and let her believe you
don’t look a gift horse in mouth.
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Eviction Notice
Come subzero, like a derailing
freight train, no one stopped me
in shedding my clothes. Waltzing
out of my pants. My longer host,
my naked body of pink and peach
every which way. Come on home
from the bars with a cold that sinks
my chest, fillet those snowbanks.
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Triple Dog Dare
you see in the mirror
yourself as else. Some
ribboning of a wild yard
wild. Dare to be the worst
thing about your neighbor:
those hedges sheared away
and dare you, jasmine or
hydrangea, let yourself be
early, standing show you are
in an alley widening this bright
breathing, haunting splendor,
so god damned.
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Ash Goedker received her MFA in poetry at the University of Idaho where she was the Editor-in-Chief at Fugue. She was the winner of the University of Idaho’s Academy of American Poets Prize and a finalist in the 2016 Indiana Review ½ K Prize. Her poems have appeared in Breakwater Review, Great Lakes Review, Indiana Review, and others. She lives in New Orleans and teaches at Nicholls State University.
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Posted in Boudin 2020, Poetry and tagged in #ashgoedker, #boudin, #mcneesereview, Poetry