Lisa Zerkle

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Again, The Spider

            slings her lines

                                                                                                                                    pins one end

to ink weed

                                                                                                the other to angel’s trumpet

            again she fixes

                                                                                    what she’s already fixed         

her work is circular                                        

                                                            she’s the center

            of her own universe                                    its everyday disasters                        

            she sweeps away                                                                     yesterday’s mess 

the home she’s made                                                   is the home she’s making               soon

                                                  

                                    all we’ll recall is her craft                               how it dazzled     

in dust                         or dew                                     but see her now

                        above her whip-stitched  script                  ready to take what comes

make it her own

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Lisa Zerkle

Lisa Zerkle’s poems and reviews have appeared in The Collagist, Comstock Review, Southern Poetry Anthology, Broad River Review, Tar River Poetry, Nimrod, storySouth, Cider Press Review, Crucible, and Main Street Rag, among others. Her poem “Relics of the Great Acceleration” won the North Carolina Writer’s Network 2017 Randall Jarrell Poetry Competition. She has served as President of the North Carolina Poetry Society, community columnist for The Charlotte Observer, and founding editor of Kakalak, an anthology of art and poetry from the Carolinas. She is the curator of 4X4CLT, a public art and poetry series of the Charlotte Center for Literary Arts.