LEE’S “BLACK-OUT” PERIOD

By Meghan Sterling

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Not the painting like a net.
Not the painting like a sink,
all today’s ideas rinsed
a porcelain white.
Not the painting like a headstone:
Here lies the hours of her days.
Not the painting like a bristle,
everyone’s fur rubbed the wrong way.
Not the painting like a bride
waiting at the end of the aisle.
Not the painting like the aisle
she will never walk down. Not
the painting like a transparent
talisman, the frantic pantomiming
of a dying cloud. Not the painting
like a crash-test auto. Not the painting
like a noose.





Meghan Sterling (she/her/hers) is a working mother whose poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Tahoma Literary Review, the Los Angeles Review, the Colorado Review, Rhino Poetry, Hunger Mountain and many other journals. Her collections are These Few Seeds (Terrapin Books), Self-Portrait with Ghosts of the Diaspora (Harbor Editions), Comfort the Mourners (Everybody Press) and View from a Borrowed Field (Lily Poetry Review’s Paul Nemser Book Prize). You Are Here to Break Apart (Lily Poetry Review Press), came out in April 2025 and Sick Letters from the Lovebed (Harbor Editions) is forthcoming in 2026. She was named Poet Laureate of the city of Gardiner, Maine in August, 2025. Read her work at meghansterling.com.