About Us
by Sophia Bannister
Listen: it was never about your jokes,
your intelligence or misunderstandings.
It was about the painting:
the woman open-mouth sleeping,
the young girls paused to look
to the door of the parlor. Out of frame
there must have been a father
homecoming to the hearth of girls.
A wife’s shut eyes and wet chin uptilted
from the pink cheeks of daughters.
Listen: it wasn’t even about the sex
we had over and over that I disliked.
“The father is home,” you told me as if
telling why your hand rested on the back of my neck.
About the Author
Sophia Bannister is a recent graduate of Barnard College, where she studied writing and the history of science. In addition to assisting a graduate course on poetry and bioethics at Case Western University, she currently does social media and outreach for the Hudson Valley Writers Center in Sleepy Hollow, New York.