Lake Michigan II
For ten days I slept only four or six hours, subject
to a small blonde bulldog. But deeply, her
a burr to me. I’d never had a pet; I did not expect
to let her into the bed. But I soften and warm.
Like my old love I loved her despite, which made it
no less true. It seemed the lake was leaving me
the longer I strayed east. My choice was not choice but a wish,
only mine, the way his naps in late afternoon were his.
When we watched the flat world we weren’t
flat anymore, especially me, my small breasts, but we couldn’t
parse it. The night is still there behind the day.
A new feeling told me how beautiful I was
and how silly was it that I agreed. This was a true account
of how it will have happened, and then it was simply true.
Copyright © 2026 by S. Brook Corfman. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on July 3, 2026, by the Academy of American Poets.
“For a long time I wrote in linked sequences, as compulsions towards [sic] control. Then, my life destabilized along ubiquitous lines—illness, family, love, the violence of the state—that were no less obliterating for being common and shared. Unity seemed not only false but malicious. Time moved forward, and I struggled to accept it as moments instead. This poem is the second, not because it is part two, but because it was the second poem that earned this title. I wrote this poem before something inevitable happened and then, like the poem says, it did.”
—S. Brook Corfman
S. Brook Corfman
