TELEGRAM TO MY HUSBAND THE MORNING AFTER
I TOLD YOU STOP STOP I TOOK
AN AMBIEN LAST NIGHT STOP
MIGRAINES STOP WHAT
WERE YOU THINKING STOP THAT
YOU WOULD SLIP IN STOP LIKE A DIVER
STOP WITHOUT A SPLASH
END REPORT
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Shelly Stewart Cato holds an MFA from Sewanee School of Letters. She won the 2021 Nancy D. Hargrove Editors’ Prize for Poetry and was a finalist for Rattle’s 2020 Poetry Prize. Work is forthcoming in Poet Lore, Washington Square Review, and New Ohio Review. She writes near the Warrior River in Walker County, Alabama. She is passionate about genre bending and short forms, blurring lines between truth and imagination.