Free Chair

After William Carlos Williams

Orphaned by indifferent kings
on a roadside, I find you glazed with rain.

You glitter with colorless light
like an urchin the sea coughed out.

I dream my skin calcifies, curls
and peels. I chew sun-poison flecks
beside you on the highway.

We aging exhibitionists
dimmed under wind wear,
we two gypsies hunch in ourselves,
listen for a mother in the car screech.

Kathleen Radigan is an English major at Wesleyan University, where she recently received the English Department's Sophie Reed Prize for Poetry. Last year, she was selected to publish a chapbook, You Guys are the Best Listeners (April 2015), with Stethoscope Press. In 2013, she was named a National YoungArts Finalist for Poetry, U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts semi-finalist, and also received a Gold Medal for Writing Portfolio from the National Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. Her poem “Love Poem for Scarecrow” was selected for the 2013 Adroit Prize for Poetry Editors’ List, and was nominated for inclusion in Plain China: Best Undergraduate Writing Anthology. Her poems can be found in The Harpoon Review, The Best Teen Writing 2013, PANK, Atrocity Exhibition, and several other publications.