Obituary
by Sara Sheiner
I am a behavioral analyst: I walk into a room & can tell who’s done what to whom. I walk into a room & it is always the same room. I walk into a room & there is always a man with a gun in his hand, there is always a mouth made larger, there is always a hate that has ruined so many, such beautiful teeth. In the room it is easy to see blood loves blood, loves the story of how they came to be. In the room the blood has hung family photos all along the wall. What my team calls spatter, what the wife-and-mother calls proof, what I call father resembles the pool that forms underneath the body. Each time I put his body in a bag, his body fits inside the bag, each time I hang his body bag in the closet, the other body bags make room for him to fit.
Sara Sheiner is currently an MFA poetry candidate at Virginia Tech, where she has been the recipient of the 2014 Poetry Society of Virginia Prize, judged by Rachel Zucker, & the Emily Morrison Prize in Poetry, selected by Dorothea Lasky. Her work has recently appeared in littletell & The Volta & is upcoming in The Meadow. She lives in Blacksburg, VA, where she teaches composition & continues to be a poetry reader for The Atlas Review.
Sara Sheiner is currently an MFA poetry candidate at Virginia Tech, where she has been the recipient of the 2014 Poetry Society of Virginia Prize, judged by Rachel Zucker, & the Emily Morrison Prize in Poetry, selected by Dorothea Lasky. Her work has recently appeared in littletell & The Volta & is upcoming in The Meadow. She lives in Blacksburg, VA, where she teaches composition & continues to be a poetry reader for The Atlas Review.