David Dodd Lee

Spoon

I inhale the substance.
The light from the windows
Pools in the doubling…

Everything’s in it—
Birdbaths, hydrangeas bobbing.
The morning glories

Have climbed halfway
Up the trellis. I’m almost unstuck;
In this house of mirrors

There’s a boy visible
In the clean whorl of steel.
He’s disconnected again.

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David Dodd Lee is the author of thirteen books of poetry, including Animalities (Four Way Books, 2014), the forthcoming The Bay (Broadstone Books, Fall, 2025), and Dead Zones, the Dictionary Sonnets (Wolfson Press, Summer, 2025), as well as a volume of persona poems, The 574 Calling Area Has Been Hit by the Blast, which will appear in 2026 (Willow Springs Books). His poems have appeared in Southeast Review, New Ohio Review, Ocean State Review, The Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, Guesthouse, and elsewhere. He teaches at Indiana University South Bend, where he is Editor-in-Chief of 42 Miles Press, as well as the online literary journal The Glacier.