Poetry

Karen Loeb

REVIEW ☆☆☆☆☆

We are pleased with the mattress.
It really did come rolled and compressed
inside a box. No, the Fed-Ex person will not stay
and unleash it into the wilds of your bedroom.
No, it doesn’t suddenly explode when you
release it. It’s kind of like a person waking up,
stretching and flexing, trying to turn over
for another five. It’s not an airbed.
Anyone who’s heard we bought it in a box
asks us that. You can never make it thin again.
Ours is guaranteed for life. Whose life
is the question. And if it’s your life, what happens
if the company goes out of business and you’re
still alive? It’s pure foam or gel or other cushiony
substances inside. We who sleep on it, our
featherless, spring-less wonder, recommend it.
No springs were sprung in the making of this bed.

Karen Loeb‘s two-year run as Eau Claire, Wisconsin’s writer-in-residence finished in 2020. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in Hanging Loose, Gyroscope Review, Thema, Fiction Southeast and other places. Her writing has won both the fiction and poetry contests in Wisconsin People and Ideas. Some of her recent work appears in Volume One, Halfway Down the Stairs, Wisconsin People and Ideas and Pinyon.