Jill Osier
Jill Osier’s first full-length book of poems, The Solace Is Not the Lullaby, was selected by Carl Phillips for the 2019 Yale Younger Poets Prize and received the 2020 John C. Zacharis First Book Award from Ploughshares. She is also the author of the chapbooks from (Bull City Press, 2018), Should Our Undoing Come Down Upon Us White (Bull City Press, 2013), winner of the Frost Place Chapbook Competition, and Bedful of Nebraskas (sunnyoutside, 2012). Honors for her work include the Poetry Society of America’s Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. Source
Small Town
Listen. The rug is wet because
I stood here. Because
it started pouring. Because
your door was open and I was
under a tree. Because
it was raining. Because the rain
and tree both
were in your backyard. Because
so was I. Because you
weren’t home. Because I knew
you were bowling. Because
I walk your road. Because your road
goes by your house. Because
I felt like a walk. Because
it was going to rain. Because your door
is never locked.
Published:
2020
Length:
Shorty
Literary Movements:
Contemporary
Anthology Years:
2022
Themes:
Poems of Place
Poems of the Everyday
Literary Devices:
Anaphora
a figure of speech in which words repeat at the beginning of successive clauses, phrases, or sentences
Enjambment
a line break interrupting the middle of a phrase which continues on to the next line
Imperative
an instruction or a command