The freezers that Trader Joe’s uses are called “coffin freezers”

You can’t always be in the mood for seasonal vegetables,
nor is there justification for the quantity of frozen

cauliflower rice in your fridge. Someone once told me
I couldn’t use the word fridge in a poem, and there’s no

justification for that, either. Be a pal and hand me a paring knife.
Etched into the walls: tally marks for every time you dream

of white sugar, flour, snow. It’s funny to think about forgiving
fabrics, i.e., bless me, nylon, for I have this bloated region

where ribs should be, raised and ready to xylophone. Hit me
with your felted mallet; it will knock the gnawed eraser out

of my mouth. Hit me with your best shot, baby, one more time.
Do you find music helpful? Does it add to your neuroses? Trying

to decide if this is disorderly conduct, conductor. Hit me with
your little baton. The music, much like my eye socket, swells.


Grace Arenas is a poet who received her MFA in poetry from the University of Montana in 2017. Her chapbook, they’ll outlive you all, was published in late 2017 with Dancing Girl Press. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Black Warrior Review, Malarkey Books, Theta Wave, and others. She currently lives and teaches in Boston.