The Wardrobe's Best Dressed: Lauren Eggert-Crowe's "The Exhibit"

The exhibit is an astrology lesson. It says the world is made of spheres. They slide back
and forth and around and between without knowing prepositions. One sphere holds
everything we know. The second sphere holds everything we don’t know. Every morning
something catches on fire. The third sphere holds the other spheres but is still lonely
because the fourth sphere holds love. When she cranes her neck up at the sky, at night,
she shivers. This may be because she is trying to find Scorpio. She is more afraid of
falling up endlessly than gravity. The night is colder than it should be. She wonders if one
of the spheres has a hole. A leak that hisses the light out like a deflated tire. The fifth
sphere holds the sun. Spheres six and seven don’t know what love is but can recite
equations. We sat under them when you said you were leaving. The cold came in then
like a guest that wants to love you all night. The eighth sphere is rounder than the gold
ring at the bottom of the drawer in the attic. Even a guest knows this, having never seen
the dust’s halo. The sun is quieter than you would imagine. I am the ninth sphere.

This selection comes from Lauren Eggert-Crowe’s chapbook The Exhibit, available from Hyacinth Girl Press. Purchase your copy here!

Lauren Eggert-Crowe is the author of three poetry chapbooks: The Exhibit (Hyacinth Girl Press 2013), In the Songbird Laboratory (Dancing Girl Press 2013) and Rungs, collaboratively written with Margaret Bashaar (Grey Book Press 2015). Her writing has appeared in Sixth Finch, DIAGRAM, The Rumpus, Salon, The Millions, L.A. Review of Books, Interrupture, and Springgun, among others. She has an MFA from the University of Arizona and lives in Los Angeles. Find her at laureneggertcrowe.com or follow her on twitter @laureggertcrowe.

Jennifer Hanks is the author of the forthcoming chapbooks Prophet Fever (Hyacinth Girl Press) and The Unsteady Planet(Instar Books), a collaboration with illustrator Julie Herndon. Her work has appeared in Arcadia, Ghost Ocean Magazine, Muzzle, Menacing Hedge, PANK, and other journals. She writes an ongoing column, Disorder Reigns, for Arcadia‘s online sundries blog. She is an MFA candidate at the University of New Orleans.