Inside Self-Storage

Gilbert Allen

“People come to us during different events in their lives.”

- Stephen Benson, President, Morningstar Mini-Storage

 
 
Say you’ve been told
sorry, corporate downsizing
is nothing personal.
Say your double-aught Infiniti
just killed somebody
whose blood you don’t want
to wash off the bumper
for sentimental reasons.
Say there’s a little blow
behind the horn.
Say your son has just taken
up the trumpet, vowing
to practice twelve hours a night
forever. Say you might have been caught
between a big house
and the big house.
Say, while you’re staring
at your hand in a motel
or in solitary
at 3:30 A.M. on Thanksgiving,
you just want to know
everything inside your real life
is still secure.

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Gilbert Allen teaches at Furman University. His sequence of poems, The Assistant, received the 2007 Robert Penn Warren Prize. A long poem, “The World of Tomorrow,” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by The Southern Review. Other new poems have appeared in Appalachian Journal, Measure, Sewanee Theological Review, Shenandoah, and Valparaiso Poetry Review.

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