Poetry By Charlotte Hamrick

Lucky Lynda CC




While I Wait

I want to throw the same, the same, and
the same into the garbage can, let it all
nestle next to smelly tuna cans and soggy

tea bags. There isn’t a blanket thick enough
to deter a determined moth, there are no shoes 
that water can’t breach. 

Missing things still wander, still wait to clasp my hand. 

So I make sandwiches
and drink tea, but plant moon flowers at sundown
and keep my shoes by the door.





Continental Drift

We are tectonic plates 
in a house of misgivings, 
knocking together 
then apart, lava flowing 
dull-eyed & destructive 

closer to the village. 
It’s said life passes 
in the blink of an eye 
while we become set 
in our ways. In my heart 

is a vase of dead flowers 
crying without tears 
for the sun, each skintight 
night strangling it 
a little more, a little more.




Charlotte Hamrick writes, reads, and photographs extraordinary everyday things in New Orleans. Her writing and photography is included in a number of literary magazines and in the Best Small Fictions 2022 and 2023 anthologies. She is Founder and Co-EiC of SugarSugarSalt Magazine. Sometimes she writes in her Substack, The Hidden Hour.
​