living - die-ing room by Alison Schuettinger

Alison Schuettinger is a teacher, artist, writer and ordained interfaith minister living in Media, PA.  She is a recipient of the 2025 Poet and Author’s Fellowship from the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing and was awarded the Paul Violi Prize for her poem “mangaire, mangaire.”  She holds a BA and MA in Psychology, Post-Master’s Certificate in Sustainable Strategies and MFA in Poetry from The New School.  Alison is an Assistant Professor of Sustainable Systems at Parsons School of Design.

carrot chopping

blue eyes

pierce through knife

husky awaits

oven hum to 425

feet stink

patterns and plants and paintings make this a homely place

dull bodily aches invisible to eye

not in the brown mud cloth poof

or the burgundy turkish rug

or the turquoise chalk contour of nude figure drawing from 2006 or another’s from 1979

the colors of every handmade step it took to here —

the hand-me-down red South Beach sweatshirt, first my father’s, torn cuffs

I wear now

but none of this shows anyone who walks in this room the weighted absence of my

womb

the scratching inside to raw now empty.