By Caits Meissner
Turn it all the way back
to before I left the roach kingdom,
my makeshift writing studio
in the backyard of weeds and trash
by now in the timeline abandoned
due to the persistent slugs
in this very rainy summer
at night when the streets
had mostly settled and nothing
looked as disheveled
a blue hum draped my shoulders
no one was yelling at me to turn
down the music, everyone
loved the trumpet with its sunshine
breaking through the night in ribbons
punctuated by an elder’s footsteps
on the back stairs with his gifts
of home cooked dinner thick with spice
in our fridge when his stove routinely broke
and marijuana always, 10pm, 6am,
so much of it propelling simple
but crystalline revelations or put me to sleep.
Who is this raggedy duo
making kitchen pan laughter? Fair Q.
Old man and young PYT
just being unlikely and perfect
side characters watching time
through sun like dust
from a stoop somewhere
in a slow plot.
Caits Meissner’s poems, comics, nonfiction and curation have appeared in The Creative
Independent, The Rumpus, [PANK], Harper’s Bazaar, Adroit, Literary Hub, Split This Rock, Bust
Magazine, The Normal School, The Guardian and Oprah Daily, among others.
As Director of Prison and Justice Writing at PEN America, Caits edited The Sentences That Create
Us: Crafting A Writer’s Life in Prison (Haymarket Books, January 2022), of which the Mellon
Foundation funded 75,000 copies to reach readers in United States prisons free of charge.
Her latest project is Flowers For Linda: A new audiozine (some call it “podcast”) about creative
relationship, giving the living their flowers, and the surprising lessons of grief.
Hot Pot Magazine 