Cider House Rules (1999)

I put my shirt on backwards in the dark.
Thunder crashes like a car

through a plate glass window. Not
to be deterred, my sister drives to the gym

in the rain. Cider House Rules
leaves me with the feeling that yes, this is it,

the home you run away from is the one
to which you will always belong. Not even

Charlize Theron can change what
business you’re in, the demands of every

day the unwritten haunting
itself into being or aborted out of it.

What a mistake it was for her
to hit the gas in drive instead of reverse

and smash the shopfront
of the nail salon. What a story.

No one could live down a story like that.

***

Cameron Morse’s poems have been published in numerous magazines, including New Letters, South Dakota Review, TYPO, and Bridge Eight.  His first collection, Fall Risk, won Glass Lyre Press’s 2018 Best Book Award. His second, Father Me Again, is available from Spartan Press. His chapbook Coming Home with Cancer belongs to Blue Lyra Press’s Delphi Poetry Series.