Emma Trelles

I tell you yet again

Waiting for the dread-shaped clouds to pull
open a window to the moon. There is no peace for
me in my wet socks and the stoop covered in possible
escape. Storm, storm. The fear drums of the news.
No one stands close, and I like it that way.

After the Edson Smith Photo Collection Santa Barbara Waterfront

Emma Trelles is the current Poet Laureate of Santa Barbara and author of Tropicalia (University of Notre Dame Press), winner of the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize. She is currently writing a second book of poems, Courage and the Clock, and has received creative writing fellowships from CantoMundo and the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs. She teaches at Santa Barbara City College and curates the Mission Poetry Series. Also by this poet “Guise