Lauren Winchester

Play, Replay

Take a cross-section
of my skull. You’ll see
closely cropped grass,

hay bales lined up
end to end. A girl is running
across the golden

cylinders, the hem
of her sundress
lifting slightly

in the wind. Play,
replay, the musk
of sunned barn wood,

the cows’ long lowing,
feather-lashes
blinking as flies

lap moisture
from their eyes. Play,
replay, while I scrub

burnt egg
from a pan, spray
the counters, rip

the last paper towel
from its cardboard
tube. Coffee grounds

bloom mold,
and a girl
is running

across the golden
cylinders, the hem
of her sundress—

Lauren Winchester’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Ecotone, The Journal, Notre Dame Review, TYPO, and elsewhere. She has been awarded artist in residency fellowships by the Edward Albee Foundation, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, and Oak Spring Garden Foundation. A semi-finalist for 92Y’s Discovery Poetry Contest, she received her MFA in poetry from The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University, where she taught creative writing and served as assistant editor of The Hopkins Review.