Agoraphobia

by Kelsey Bryan-Zwick

Forgetting how to leave the home

to spend all the spoons it takes

to mouth past the cats, to dress

to hello and awkward lip small talk

with friends that know you but also

know how nervous you can get

just trying to get through one sentence

without the word surgery.

     

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Kelsey Bryan-Zwick is a Spanish/English speaking SoCal poet and artist with a B.A. from UC Santa Cruz in Literature/Creative Writing. She is the author of three chapbooks, the most recent being Watermarked (Sadie Girl Press) a hand bound edition which intermixes both her poetry and art. Disabled with scoliosis from a young age her poems often focus on trauma, giving heart to the antiseptic language of hospital intake forms. A Pushcart Prize nominee, Kelsey’s poetry appears in Incandescent Mind, petrichor, Like a Girl, Lummox, Storm Cycle 2015, Short Poems Ain’t Got Nobody to Love, Cadence Collective, Eunoia Review, and Redshift 2. Find her at kelseybryanzwick.wixsite.com/poetry