A Dream After Watching Stalker During Fire Season

The Stalker brought us here
to speak to a telephone—a landline

in a toxic room. The landscape here 
was changed by some long dead 

company that never took 
the blame. Before we can 

use the phone, we have to pass through 
a corridor made of sand,

and this journey makes me think: 
How is sand made into glass? 

The Stalker says we’ll have to tell 
our secrets, and once he hears 

ours, he’ll spill 
his too. He brings us

to a barren land, but he knows
each little change in the landscape, 

and though change can feel 
like witchcraft, he makes us 

hold onto science by recording 

each waving, little, dry 
piece of grass—camera in hand. 

*

Erin Carlyle (she/her) is a poet living in Atlanta, Georgia. Her poetry often explores the connections between poverty, place, and girlhood, and can be found in journals such as Tupelo Quarterly, Ruminate, Arts and Letters, Jet Fuel, and Prairie Schooner. Her debut full-length collection, Magnolia Canopy Otherworld, is out now on Driftwood Press. She is currently pursuing her PhD in Creative Writing with an emphasis on poetry at Georgia State University.