Poetry by Lauren Tivey

                        ​ Alexander Rabb CC



Storage Spaces

I overhear an old-timer defending my forklift skills
to his buddies huddling in the receiving department,
fists in pockets, frayed baseball caps framing flat eyes.

They dip Copenhagen, while waiting for me to make a mistake.
The forks screech on the way out, close against the skid slats,
30 feet up. The men chew and chew. I stop, lower and tip

forward a fraction, and the forks slide free with calculated
precision. My red manicure’s smeared with grease, sweat
pearled on my neck. There’s an exact moment, when I get it

just right, between the 3” of wood — an inch above, an inch below,
forks hovering in the limbo of a spare inch — a sweet spot, safe.
This is important: I can breathe now. Pallet placed, I pull out slow,

bring the arms back, oiled chains rolling down-shaft, my steel
descending, an extension of concentration, will. The men disperse,
show over. I want to tell them that this isn’t about men versus

women, no sex-war; it’s about the work of a rigorous, terrified
mind, of fitting difficult packages into neat places, so they may be
governed. I want to tell them it’s about controlled emotion, a way

to sort the dangerous and the heavy, those shrink-wrapped pallets
of pain, a way to parcel a scarred, battered heart, but I won’t,
because they’re hard men who already understand this is never

uttered. They know these storage spaces well: all the insults
ever received, stacked on shelves; aisles of divorce; supermarkets
of childhood suffering; entire warehouses of fear, dark and sealed.

Everything in its place. They may even understand there’s nowhere
on earth big enough to store the death of a child. I take that horror,
bit by bit, on covered skids, 4’ x 4’, every damn day, and raise it

to a shelf, lay it on steel racks, and go back for more, hoping it never
falls. I want to tell them that women can close themselves off, too,
that this isn’t tied to gender. I want to tell them I know this is hard work.
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Lauren Tivey is the author of four chapbooks, most recently Moroccan Holiday, winner of The Poetry Box Chapbook Prize 2019, The Breakdown Atlas & Other Poems, Her Blood Runs Through Me, and Dance of the Fire Horse. Tivey is a Pushcart Prize nominee (2016, 2019); her work has appeared in Connotation Press, The Coachella Review, and Split Lip Magazine, among dozens of other publications. She teaches English and Creative Writing at Flagler College, in St. Augustine, Florida. 

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