By Emma Winsor Wood
Not a place to inhabit
But one that inhabits
*
Hard to get to
So not everyone can
*
There is one island in Hawaii where the residents still live as they did in the 1800s–no cars, no
computers, no cash. It’s owned by white men, who dictate the rules that keep it that way.
*
A bird, a fish, a town just south of Las Vegas. Las Vegas.
*
Whatever you think it is it is
Wherever you thought it was it was
*
Once named, it closes like a fist around another fist
*
Notice: Private Property
Notice: No Trespassing
Notice: Trespassers will be violated to the fullest extent of the law
*
: an enclosure
Emma Winsor Wood is the author of the poetry collection The Real World (BlazeVOX books, 2022) and the translator of A Failed Performance (Plays Inverse, 2018). Her poems and essays have appeared in The American Poetry Review, ZYZZYVA, Fence, jubilat, DIAGRAM, The Colorado Review, and BOAAT, among others.