Sleeping In
Martha Collins
a new year and I am leaving
a month-long rental apart-
ment I had forgotten
I have to clean today leave
the new people will be
arriving but first
I have to call you I have
not called you enough
this month I’m sorry
I have not called you more but
oh I had forgotten you can-
not answer anymore
Martha Collins‘s eleventh book of poems, Casualty Reports, was published in October 2022 by Pittsburgh. Her tenth, Because What Else Could I Do (Pittsburgh, 2019), won the William Carlos Williams Award. In May 2023, Milkweed will publish her fifth volume of co-translated Vietnamese poetry. Collins founded the creative writing program at U.Mass.-Boston and taught at Oberlin for ten years. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.