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Maurya Simon is the author of nine books of poetry, including The Enchanted Room; Speaking in Tongues, nominated for the Pulitzer Prize; Ghost Orchid, nominated for a 2004 National Book Award in Poetry; and The Raindrop’s Gospel: The Trials of St. Jerome and St. Paula (2010). She teaches in the creative writing department at the University of California at Riverside and lives in the Angeles National Forest of the San Gabriel Mountains.

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The Skeletons
in the Closet

by Maurya Simon
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They sit politely behind the dresses
fumbling through pockets, fingering
the seams of evening gowns, looking
not for a way in, but for a way out.

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  • I always wondered what that faint rustling in my closet was....

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