Claire Scott
Claire Scott is an award-winning poet who has received multiple Pushcart Prize nominations. Her work has appeared in the Atlanta Review, Bellevue Literary Review, New Ohio Review and Healing Muse among others. Claire is the author of Waiting to be Called and Until I Couldn’t. She is the co-author of Unfolding in Light: A Sisters’ Journey in Photography and Poetry.
WE WEAR OLD STORIES
We wear stories
like paint-stained Keds
stinking of old sweat
or vintage camel hair
coats in musty closets
we rummage through them
like a penniless person
searching a dumpster
looking for stories
that reveal how unfairly
we were a treated to justify
our anger, our bourbon, our blunts
our thousand dollar
a week talk therapy
with Dr. Anderson who mostly
dozes through the sessions
How our mother never made
fresh oatmeal cookies, preferring
store bought Pepperidge Farm
how our father never rode
bikes with us or took us
skiing in Gstaad like other dads
the seductive pleasure
of retrospective anger
magnifying past deprivations
with the help of Dr. P. Q. Anderson
keeping us stuck
on the flypaper of the past
call your local trash company
tell them to haul the dumpster away
especially the paint-stained Keds
especially the camel hair coats
