Terry Ann Wright’s debut chapbook Nature Studies was published by Sadie Girl Press in 2015; the title poem was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, her third nomination. Her poetry has appeared in The Rise Up Review, The Harpoon Review, Chiron Review, Cadence Collective, Angel City Review, Spectrum, Carnival, and East Jasmine Review, and in several anthologies, including Gutters & Alleyways: Perspectives on Poverty and Struggle; The Language I Was Broken In; Like a Girl: Perspectives on Feminine Identity; and an upcoming anthology from Picture Show Press. She has been a terrible barista, a pretty good editor, and an outstanding Pajamarama! Storytime host, and now spends her days ridding the world of comma splices, one college freshman at a time. She is a proud graduate of San Francisco State University and Goddard College.
The Museum
An invitation to the story: it happened
and happened; a candle flares in drafts.
A plague, a festival, a fishing net;
The Map Room, dead rabbits, lions.
How she tortures figments. Ego vast
(scent of menses in the Asiatic wing),
she forgets to be offended, offends instead.
Snow falls in the solarium, old coffee
burns out the pot. The owl, the pigeons,
dead on the table; a tedious explanation
of what the owl is for. Shipwrecks.
How she suffers valor, symbols like us,
symbols amuck: cat or carp or knuckle,
carat or cock; Eve, the staircase, the stair.