I’ll commission a dollhouse door
just below my collarbone, with a toothpick
for a handle. Inside, there’s a brand-new
laundry line, where I pin their worn clothes:
the mother’s denim, the daughter’s opal shirt
with mustard stains and daisies, the father’s ratty
briefs. I set the dinner table in my palm.
It only takes a moment. I could close my fingers
to protect them from blue jays. I could close
my fist to end it all. The father crawls into my ear
so I can hear him better. From the lobe, he dangles
a pickax fashioned from the melted-down gun
metal and bullet casings he used to keep
in the basement safes. I want to wield it
to shatter the links clamped around the mother
and daughter’s wrists. They’d dance on my index
finger, rubbing at their irritated skin. Here
is where the real work would start. More doors
needed, coaxed from the raised flesh of my kneecaps.
One opening into grocery store aisles full of other lives,
without price tags. The other holding a dark
room a man’s voice has never touched.
DANIEL LURIE is a Jewish, rural writer from eastern Montana. He holds an MFA in Poetry from the University of Idaho. Daniel is co-editor of Outskirts Literary Journal and a Poetry Reader for Chestnut Review. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in swamp pink, Poetry Northwest, Gulf Coast, Pleiades, and others. He recently won the 2026 Mississippi Review Prize, was awarded the Ronald Wallace Poetry Fellowship from UW-Madison, and will serve as a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford in 2026-2028. Find him at danielluriepoetry.com
Okay Donkey 