I think of little Leah who stumbles off the camp bus at pick-up, beelines to the buzzy psychic's table set up on the terrifying sidewalk
of New York City. Our first reaction, Let's leave this stranger alone . . . but her solid curiosity a sock finding a freezing foot, or water spilling
on salt, something extraordinary because it is necessary, sincere as sand slipping through cracks in a plastic car seat. What is departure if not
a stain on sheet music; my clarinet squeaking for dear life and I must decide what part of me survives. Departure is my neighbors having sex
with our shared wall for three minutes; departure is not dying but my dead dog teaching me to sit, then stay awhile in the reddest of blue rooms. Every
branch is a sling. Every dinner table is my dad returning from the morgue and remembering if he works or passes there. And when you find me
all shriveled in the dressing room, like I just lifted out of a two-hour soapy bath, I'll ask who heard my invisible run, sieve and shotgun of size tag whimpers, hangers
scurrying sky versus earth, stitches ripped like the C -section my mother never had. I'll finally know why a dress favors to drape the ground rather than my body.
Amanda Dettmann is a queer poet, performer, and arts educator who is the author of Untranslatable Honeyed Bruises. She earned her MFA in Poetry from New York University where she taught undergraduates and has received support from the Kenyon Review Writers Workshops and the Juniper Summer Writing Institute. Dettmann was one of two finalists for the 2022 Action, Spectacle contest judged by Mary Jo Bang, as well as the winner of the 2023 Peseroff Prize in Poetry selected by Jake Skeets. Her poems have been nominated for 2025 Best of the Net and a Pushcart Prize, appearing or forthcoming in publications such as The Adroit Journal, Fence, Verse Daily, The Oakland Review, Portland Review, Yalobusha Review, and Stanford’s poetry journal Mantis, among others.
