Ohio-born poet Amanda Williamsen is a former Poet Laureate of Cupertino, California. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in New Ohio Review, Baltimore Review, Midwestern Gothic, The Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review, red wheelbarrow, and Pathways, a journal of the Ohio Humanities Council. She now lives on Bainbridge Island, Washington.
Every night it is the same. Her stomach rises first, lifted from the bed like a noodle across fork tines. Shoulders and legs follow, and the feet, buoyant, drift upward so that her body angles ...