PoetryMagazine.com Editor's Featured Poet Penelope Schott

Penelope Schott
USA

Penelope Scambly Schott lives in Portland, Oregon where she writes, paints, hikes, and spoils her husband and dog more than it would have been safe to spoil her children. She has worked as a donut maker in a cider mill, a home health aide, an artist’s model, and, through it all, a college professor. She has published a novel, four chapbooks, and six full-length books of poetry, including three historical narratives and three collections of lyrics. The poems here come from May the Generations Die in the Right Order (2007) and Baiting the Void (2005).

What’s Inside

When I opened the box
and took out the bag

when I unfolded the top of the bag
and reached in past my wrist

when I unfurled my fingers
and poked toward the bottom of the bag

when I stroked something
that almost felt like fur

it was my dead father’s springy white hair
it was my yellow dog’s silky coat

it was the channeled mink coat of the lady
who used to live downstairs

it was the silk-lined ermine muff
from when I was a princess

it was the damp taste of my yellow pigtail
wound around a puffy red thumb

it was one howl in a chorus
on this treeless hill

it was the tufted and variegated pelt
I am sprouting in my sleep

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