Paper people in a paper land,
a paper house, crazily slanted,
a house like a child would draw:
a square, a triangle, a circle
for the sun.
Stick people stand outside the house
grinning in crayon. No hair, no hands.
Fire people.
But how will you hold the people
when they’re burning up in your hands?
This poem is from Amy Newlove Schroeder’s book The Sleep Hotel, a winner of the FIELD Poetry Prize, published by Oberlin College Press in 2010. She lives in Los Angeles and teaches at the University of Southern California.
*Photo courtesy of Pedro Presilha.