Grasp

Moths tell me to buy lottery tickets. A whole swarm of them at my window this morning. 

Sun up. Buy tickets! they buzz. I pretend I’m dreaming and make plans to ignore their advice 

I barely understand anyway. I stop pretending and wake up, put socks on first. Cold feet. 

I wonder how likely I’d be to win the lottery but ignore the impulse to look it up. What did we do when we couldn’t look anything up? We knew less. About the lottery at least. What do the moths do during the daytime? Sleep like bats but more fragile and not upside down. 

Not like bats, in that case. Untrained magicians.

Yetta Rose Stein

YETTA ROSE STEIN reads and writes in Livingston, Montana. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Adelaide Literary Magazine, Another Chicago Magazine, Tupelo Quarterly, and elsewhere. She is a founding member of the Mug Club, is on the board of Montana's Intermountain Opera, and is the Associate Poetry Editor for Hunger Mountain Review. She is a graduate of Hellgate High School and an MFA candidate at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. She likes pomegranates, kissing her friends, and water.

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Almost There

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In The Deep Clearing