At my stairwell there’s an empty
glass shattered place where a fire
extinguisher should be, grey
shards line the little white
box like a painting hung on
someone else’s wall
and I laugh at a tool
used never replenished
at the left-
overs of my disaster
as I descend
into my home
I flip on the stove
put my hand over the flames
scramble some
eggs for breakfast.
Cori Bratby-Rudd is a queer LA-based writer and co-founder of Influx Collectiv(e)’s Queer Poetry Reading Series. She graduated Cum Laude from UCLA’s Gender Studies department, and received her MFA in Creative Writing from California Institute of the Arts. She has been published in Ms. Magazine, The Gordian Review, Califragile, PANK Magazine, Entropy, Crab Fat Magazine, among others. She won the Editorial Choice Award for her research paper in Audeamus Academic Journaland was nominated as one of Lambda Literary’s 2018 Emerging Writers. Her manuscript Dis/owned: Confessions of a Frankgaybe is a semi-finalist for YesYes Book’s 2019 Pamet River Prize. You can find her at coribratbyrudd.com.