BIO
Carolina Hospital’s work has appeared in the Norton Anthology of Latino Literature; Raising Lilly Ledbetter: Women Occupy the Workplace; Florida Literature; and Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing. She has published six books including the novel A Little Love, under the pen name C. C. Medina, The Child of Exile: a Poetry Memoir and No Excuses! A Brief Survival Guide to Freshman Composition. Her collection Key West Nights and Other Aftershocks is forthcoming from Anhinga Press.
By the Miami River
The scraggy woman
with her half tainted
red hair inspects
the heirloom
hallways sorting the
missing furniture
wary
wary
The house molders
flanked by high
risers
blinding
blinding
a garden parody
hungover pavers
cracked planters.
Inside
walls are
crumbling,
tarnished pipes
and rusted conduits
setting apart each
room
conspiring
conspiring
She veils the light
with blanket curtains
until nightfall,
when voices have quieted, she
sweeps
sweeps
sweeps
dirt from wooden
planks
between the copper
pipes.