Elizabeth Galoozis
Don’t Be a Stranger
Be something more interesting,
a ghost, maybe. An earworm.
Materialize in a dream to kiss me on the nose
without showing your face.
Skirt the edges of my awareness; surface
when I’m pulling warm underwear out of the dryer,
pushing my thumb into a rotten orange.
Be neither blank nor crisp; stay out of focus
just enough to get the gist.
A flare of pain in my shoulder, a spark
in my sacral chakra.
The desire to pour a drink.
A glass etched with age, the contents of the glass.
The ice, the whiskey, the cherry.
Yes. Be the cherry.
Elizabeth Galoozis
Elizabeth Galoozis’s debut collection, Law of the Letter won the Hillary Gravendyk Prize from the Inlandia Institute and will be published in spring 2025. Her poems have appeared in Air/Light, Pidgeonholes, RHINO, Witness, Sinister Wisdom, and elsewhere. Her obsessions/passions include word games, stone fruit, and stationery. Elizabeth serves as a reader for The Maine Review and Abandon Journal, works as a librarian, and lives in southern California. She can be found on Twitter and Instagram at @thisamericanliz, and at her website https://elizabethgaloozis.wordpress.com/.