Margaret Hanshaw
At Home
…terribly nervous when I sang…. You just have to love performing, and I happen to be an introvert.
—Annette Hanshaw, early-twentieth-century jazz singer
Some animals belong
to land. Some
to water. Some to the in
between: an alley
cat swimming, a fish flung
into orbit. Reader, where
do you belong? My late great
aunt stood under the stage
lights and despised it—second
by second, year
by year. Is she
in the wind? Is she super
annuated, beautiful
or gone? I find
my dog asleep on the couch. I ease
in beside her, close my eyes.
Margaret Hanshaw is a poet and writer from Sudbury, Massachusetts. Her poems have appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review, New American Writing, West Branch, Bennington Review, Verse Daily, VOLT, Vallum, Posit, Prelude, Poetry East, and elsewhere. She is author of the chapbook Yellow Ripe (dancing girl press).
