Tammy Robacker
Tammy Robacker graduated from the Rainier Writing Workshop MFA program in Poetry at Pacific Lutheran University (2016). She won the 2015 Keystone Chapbook Prize for her manuscript, “R”. Her second poetry book, Villain Songs, is forthcoming with ELJ Publications in Fall 2016. Tammy published her first collection of poetry, The Vicissitudes, in 2009 (Pearle Publications) with a generous TAIP grant award. Tammy’s poetry has appeared in or is forthcoming in FRiGG, Tinderbox, Menacing Hedge, Chiron Review, VoiceCatcher, Duende, So to Speak, Crab Creek Review, WomenArts, and many more. Tammy lives in Oregon. Visit the poet: tammyrobacker.com
Agoraphobia
who moved
my chi? can I leave
now? can I
breathe?
I am not sure
where I belong
anymore. My
centered uni-
verse: a collapsar.
the free world
grows so
small
just four walls
and a worn pathos
from my living
room. I’ve heard
strangers standing
outside my door
knocking—shadow
lotharios,
I ignore.
their slithering,
curving spines,
all dark question
marks. all
worst case
scenarios I leave
unanswered.
Memory, the Wooded Area
Memory, the wooded area
behind blood moon face
where holes dug deep
and bodies dumped.
Poisoned mush of rooms.
Here, old toads on stools
linger, growing soft lichen-
stringy fingers to shush midnight
blue coyote howls
and screech owl sounds.
Flashbacks like ochre pupa worms
squirm there in perpetual puberty,
in old pulp-fissured logs,
tickling beneath the bark.
Ribbed grubs rub themselves
out in cerebellum dark.
