Beth Dulin

INHERITANCE

Once, I showed

a polaroid of my childhood

home to my therapist.

He stared at it for a long

time before telling me:

The house looks haunted.

When you return to your roots,

remember to pull up what’s rotting

beneath the ground.

Lead the skeletons out of the closets.

And listen to their voices.

Let them tell our stories.

Secrets carried across generations.

Too many lives cut short by

shotgun blasts to the head.

You must move the line, and clear

a new path. Bring a machete if

you have to.

Beth Dulin lives on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. She is a graduate of The New School’s Eugene Lang College. Her writing has appeared in The American Journal of Poetry, Atlanta Review, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Gargoyle, and New York Quarterly, among others, and is forthcoming in Wigleaf. Her poetry has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize, and she was Yes, Poetry’s Poet of the Month in March 2021... Full Profile