Emily Pinkerton

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the sky is deep charcoal, threatening rain
for the first time in a year
filled with fire and dust. I watch the reel
of a VHS tape unspool in the wind,
snaking across the width of 40th street,
billowing in shining black arcs
as my car creeps toward the traffic light.

---

Emily Pinkerton (she/they) holds an MFA from San Francisco State University. Her writing has previously appeared in the chapbooks Natural Disasters (2016), Bloom (2018) and Adaptations (2018), and the journals ZYZZYVA, Juked, BlazeVOX, and Berkeley Poetry Review. She is a 2023 Fellow at USF Verftet in Bergen, Norway. See more online or on Twitter (@neongolden).