Illustration by Morgan Maurer, 2011

I will not wake up today. I will not get out of bed. I will stay cocooned in sheets.

I will not eat, answer the phone, check email. I will spend the day watching soaps on channel 5 and imagining every piece of lint on my carpet is actually an insect. I will get up 27 times to check. It will never be an insect. I will be startled by the shadows my glasses make and decide that being able to see is not that important. I will nap. I will read Anne Carson. I will worry that I am turning into Emily Brontë. I will spend an hour prying underneath my fingernails. I will reconsider using the phone but will not want to talk to any of the 108 people in my phonebook. I will listen to Johnny Cash but for only 20 minutes because he will make me cry. I will spend another hour imagining how glamorous my life could be if I lived in Québec, or Nebraska. I will take a shower because I need an excuse to change my clothes. Then I will make tea because there will be nothing left to do. I’ll stare at the table. I’m not sure how long.

Donna Hunt is a Pushcart nominee, and her chapbook The Coastline of Antarctica is forthcoming this summer from Finishing Line Press.Her poems are under consideration for the Yale Younger Poets Anthology, and she was recently awarded a four-week full fellowship to the Vermont Studio Center.Her poems have appeared in Diagram, Prime Number Magazine, The Cleveland Review among others.She received her MFA at Queens University of Charlotte, and is currently teaching at CUNY.She has a poetry podcast available from itunes.

Read an interview with Donna here.