Sunday, April 14, 2024 Emancipation Event by Heather Rae Ackerman
The dirty corners of the kitchen
are something I don’t know how to fix.
I drop my satin wallet in a snowbank,
that first winter at my little apartment.
We throw parties with themes, theater kids
with throwaway money and cheap local wine
with a goat wearing clothes on the label.
I still have that colander,
that red chair, that bookshelf, that lamp –
but I threw out the pillows
and the steak knives someone
stabbed through the phonebook.
The rent is a scam. There’s a graveyard next door.
Love is made on every bed and floor.
Life is starting.
We break each other because we’re fragile,
sitting on the stairs, making ourselves clear –
we patch it up,
and then we break again when parting.
Everything is juice and embarrassing pain
and sudden kitchen kisses, just for this year.
The white door with the rickety lock I never turned
(after that time we had to
send someone skinny through the window) –
what would I give to stick my key in again
to find you all there in pajamas?
About the Poet
Heather Rae Ackerman is a writer and artist from Buffalo, NY. She is a graduate of the University at Buffalo with an extensive background in theater and performance.
In 2010-2011, as the artistic director and head writer for the Honesty Theater, she produced nearly 100 original short plays, which ran the gamut from sketch comedy to experimental drama. Her work has appeared on the stage (The Cashier’s Manifesto, Buffalo Infringement Festival (2013), The Hook-Handed Man is not a Feminist, Green Buffalo Productions (2018), The Shepherdess, American Repertory Theater (2019, with Tiffany Dillon) and in print (The Laundress, Ghost City Review, September 2019).
In 2022, along with Amanda Falker, she co-founded The Lowell Collective, an artist’s group with a focus on creating fine art, photography, and published work. She lives in a beautiful loft apartment with eight houseplants.
This is the first poem in her debut full-length collection Little Apartment published this month by Fair Isle Publishing.
Related Event
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- Heather Rae Ackerman will be the featured reader at Poetry Night at Caffe Aroma, 957 Elmwood Ave. in Buffalo, at 9 p.m. on Wednesday, May 1st. The event will serve as the book launch celebration for her first full-length collection of poetry Little Apartment (Fair Isle Publishing).
The Poem of the Week feature is curated by literary legacy awardee R.D. Pohl.