Poetry by Charlotte Hamrick

              ​Nathalie CC




Caught in the Cloudy Eye

The bottomland rose up,
a hard, broken ripening.

I fell into its cloudy eye,
wrapped myself in tear-dripped moss.

I sewed myself out of my softness,
held myself out of the sun,

settled in.
The center of myself fell 

before the stillness,
the center of myself stunned,

dull and cool.
I held myself beneath the air,

my center without breath,
without a friend.

I imprisoned myself 
beneath the moss.

Pulled close the gate 
with my own hands,

my own heart.





Everything is Temporary 

My grandmother had a blood red rose that twirled around a post on her 
front porch. There’s a picture of me standing next to it when my eyes 
were still fresh and she was in the kitchen cooking tiny butter beans 
just picked that morning by my grandfather's hands. Thumbing 
through the old photo album I pause at that photo, 
remember how my dad dug up the rose before 
the old house was sold, replanted it in my 
parents backyard. A few pages later
there it is, twirling over my parents 
porch, now only a picture in an 
album. Gone from this earth, 
like my grandparents, 
like my mother,
one day, like
all of
us.

​
​

​Charlotte Hamrick has been published in a number of literary journals including Emerge Journal, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Ekphrastic Review, MORIA, and Poetry Foundation’s Harriet Blog and has had multiple literary nominations. She is Features Editor for Reckon Review and Creative Nonfiction Editor for The Citron Review. She lives in New Orleans with her husband and a menagerie of rescued pets.