Rachel Contreni Flynn: Two Poems

Corncrib Lit By Sunset | Lifted

Corncrib Lit By Sunset

I must be done with this: blame and accusation,
walking barefoot over icy mud fields.

I must attend to the washing up and making right.
To the straightening. The corncrib lit by sunset —

a looking-throughness, an unnerving capturing
or capacity to capture. Most of the year, an empty space,

delineated. Air pressing in with its anger and want.
Often I see myself establishing a foothold. Often

I imagine a farmhouse nestled in the center of my chest,
an oilcloth on the table where cream and sugar rest:

cracked shapes of barnyard animals. Often I want
to go home and have home be like it never was.

Lifted

The enormous rocking horse
with its aqua ribbons and tinsel,

its hard red mouth painted
like a lifted scythe, waits for me

on the shop floor — to ride,
to buy. Did I say the horse

was on fire? That smoke fell
on me like wind? It was beautiful,

the scorch and smile, and not
a disaster but something

wild and final. An arm slips
under my body and lifts me

with little effort away.

Poet's Biography:

Born outside Paris, Rachel Contreni Flynn grew up in a small Indiana farming town and now teaches poetry and practices law near Chicago. She received degrees in history and journalism from Indiana University, then went on to law school. In 2005, her first book, Ice, Mouth, Song, was published by Tupelo Press. She received a 2007 Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Flynn's work appears widely in magazines and journals such as Barrow Street, Washington Square, Spoon River Review, Oxford Magazine, and Epoch. Rachel Flynn also works as a corporate attorney for Fortune Brands, Inc., a Fortune 500 consumer products company where she specializes in employment law. She lives in Mundelein, Illinois with her husband and two children and is working on her second book.