I imagine the reader and the critic
embodied as a single person,
a pencil-shaped woman
with blonde short hair,
and I sometimes find it possible
to lock her out of the house when the work begins.
But when I imagine myself explaining this process
to the host of a late night show
there she is again
scrolling through her phone.
Eric Subpar is a poet from Washington whose work has appeared in Hobart, Bruiser, and Burial Mag. He is the author of Ghouls in Love (Pig Roast 2025). @EricSubpar on Insta and Twitter.