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Still Life with Taylor Ham Sandwich
Anything can be an altar.
I skip Easter mass
to sit by the window
in my old bedroom.
(The walls are still pink
but the hospital bed
is new.)
April sun pools
on my father’s chest
& the tray of offerings
beside him:
a mug of coffee,
now cold;
quartered strawberries,
their red juices
seeping lazily
across the plate
toward the English muffin
with Taylor ham
& congealed eggs.
My father snores
& to me it is birdsong.
It reminds me
of an old photo
on my mother’s fridge:
him asleep in a beach chair
in Wildwood Crest:
mouth open,
one earbud dangling loose
like a new species of jellyfish.
Now he sleeps curled
in the nautilus shell
of his own spine,
coral pink bath towel
rolled & tucked
under his bad knee.
I like to imagine
he is being cradled
in the hand of a giant
I can’t see—
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Amy Dougher-Solórzano is a poet originally from Harrison, New Jersey. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Rutgers University-Newark, and a BS in chemical biology from Saint Joseph’s University. She was selected by the Fine Arts Work Center as a 24PearlStreet Scholar for Fall 2024. Her poems have appeared in New England Review and Rattle. She lives in Northern Virginia with her husband Aleck. [“Still Life with Taylor Ham Sandwich” first appeared in New England Review, Volume 46.1 in March 2025.]
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A Sick Man in Bed, a Woman Praying to the Virgin and Child. Oil painting by Du Moulin, 1750.