Photography © Jennifer Matthews

Cider House Rules (1999)

I put my shirt on backwards in the dark.
Thunder crashes like a car
through a plate glass window. Not to be deterred,
my sister drives to the gym

in the rain. Cider House Rules
leaves me with the feeling that yes, this is it,
the home you run away from is
the one to which you will always return.

Not even Charlize Theron can change
what business you’re in, the demands of every
day the unwritten haunting itself
into being or slipping out the back door of gone forever.

What a mistake it was to hit the gas! In drive
instead of reverse, we fly though
the shopfront of the nail salon. What a story.
No one could live down a story like that.

Cameron Morse’s poems have been published in numerous magazines, including New Letters, South Dakota Review, TYPO, and Bridge Eight. His first collection, Fall Risk, won Glass Lyre Press’s 2018 Best Book Award. His second, Father Me Again, is available from Spartan Press. Coming Home with Cancer will be coming out this summer in Blue Lyra Press’s Delphi Poetry Series.

Poet/Photographer Jennifer Matthews’ poetry has been published in Nepal by Pen Himalaya and locally by the Wilderness Retreat Writers Organization, Midway Journal, The Somerville Times, Ibbetson Street Press and Boston Girl Guide. Jennifer was nominated for a poetry award by the Cambridge Arts Council for her book of Poetry Fairy Tales and Misdemeanors. Her songs have been released nationally and internationally and her photography has been used as covers for a number of Ibbetson Street Press poetry books and has been exhibited at The Middle East Restaurant, 1369 Coffeehouses, Sound Bites Restaurant in Somerville and McLean Hospital.