What is Lost, What is Gained
by Laura Madeline Wiseman
Earrings, wingbacks, beads to a necklace and their string, sunglasses, bike gloves, cans of coconut water, jerky, hair rubber bands, tire pressure, energy, fear — in every communal shower in small town schools something slides down the drain. A visor, a pair of bike gloves, a set of house keys, remain somewhere in the grass. Slide out of jersey and an unidentifiable object bounces to tent floor. On such rides, everyone is stripped of riches, reduced to the body, the tongue, to the necessary speech, the hook.
Laura Madeline Wiseman is the author of 22 books and chapbooks and the editor of Women Write Resistance: Poets Resist Gender Violence, selected for the Nebraska 150 Book List. Her collaborative book with artist Sally Deskins, Intimates and Fools, is a Nebraska Book Award 2015 Honor Book. Her book Drink won the 2016 Independent Publisher Bronze Book Award for poetry. Her recent collections are An Apparently Impossible Adventure and Leaves of Absence. Her essay “Seven Cities of Good” was an honorable mention in Pacifica Literary Review’s 2015 Creative Nonfiction Award. She teaches at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.