chewing
gum
fingertips coming off
half
dust
poking
too much
wired sniffling
please
prefrain
take
meeting softly
sweet flies drumming on a packet
collect
sugar packets
empty deskdrawer
electrical tape charges
smackin’
pen
sun a side of
folding as many stickies
hard to breathe the shutter of
focus
scab
like scar like what’s the difference
paid to write
have some lupus thing
prevent
tummy hurt !
or at least backwards
channels
severe monotonous intolerance
Emily Shafer is a poet and photographer. She is an incoming MFA candidate in Image Text at Cornell University, has an MFA in Creative Writing, Poetry from Brooklyn College, and teaches first-year writing at CUNY. She is the author of it’s too early for poetry (Proper Tales Press, 2025) and publications in The Academy of American Poets, The Brooklyn Review, and more. Born and raised in Rochester, N.Y., she lives and works in New York City. @emilyshaferwrites
