Sister Hunting, by Keith Gaboury
Sister Hunting
When the Sunday morning sun
hands out sunburns
like maternity ward newborns,
I sprint through
that neonate heat.
At the junction of Love
& Am I Alive, I tumble
into a cafe’s hot arms.
I need a hug
from my absent sister.
Can I spot her in this cafe?
I plop down at an effervescent table.
I lost my sister’s glow.
Do you have her glow?
Her face marches into an army
of alien stomps.
I stumble over to a beaming table.
I lost my sister’s smile.
Do you have her smile?
I swoop around her mouth’s expanse
but I just find a growl.
At the table in the corner
underneath a framed painted sister,
I slip onto a chair
across from a foreign sister
writing in a journal
very much like my own.
I lost my sister’s love.
Do you have her love?
Keith Gaboury: By day, I work as a caffeinated preschool teacher with a sarcastic spine. By night, I write poetry, eat spicy food, and enjoy sarcastic time with my fiancé in Oakland, California. After I graduated with a MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College in Boston, I had to fly from a MFA fantasy into making money. Despite the flame-torched pay, I landed on a job as a preschool teacher. In 2016, I rode a dragon from Massachusetts to California. As this dragon's claws are now fixed into Oakland ground, I write poetry with personality, go on Lake Merritt runs without tripping into the water, and teach dragon kindness to preschool children.
