Where all things go to die
…
When I climbed the creaking, slanted wooden steps of her front porch, I felt that I would crash right through them, possibly down to the center of the earth. I had always heard that if there was an actual place where the earth ends, where all things went to die, it was Maggie Harper’s place; that she hadn’t thrown a thing away since 1930. I opened Maggie’s warped metal screen door, crusted with dirt and dead insects, ensnared between the rusted squares of the screen, knocked on the front door, the paint of which had been chipped and scratched in streaks as if a gigantic forest creature had slashed it with its claws. “Yes,” I confirmed to myself. “I have reached the end of the earth.” I almost congratulated myself on my bravery and a life heroically lived, but the door opened sooner than I had prepared myself for. Maybe they were right. Maybe all things did die here. And suddenly, I was a thing.
….
This poem is from the chapbook The Hoarder by Logan Chace (Finishing Line Press), and can be found at https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/the-hoarder-by-logan-chace/
Logan Chace earned an M.F.A. in Creative Writing (Poetry) from Hollins University, and he currently teaches English and Creative Writing to high school students at Wyoming Seminary in Kingston, Pennsylvania. His debut full-length collection of poems, After a Night of Drowning, was published by Kelsay Books in 2022. He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
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