GABRIELLA

 

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          at a school for children with neurological disabilities

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It helps
to look her in the eyes,
notice her gloves aren’t on
again, when she asks
a teacher to hold her fingers
because they are cold. It’s
a preferred activity
to be outside, and how
does one tell her she can’t go outside

if she won’t wear her gloves
when it’s only 23 degrees,
after she’s sat in a circle of kids
for a whole four minutes knowing

this will earn her outside time?
Her hat is on. Her coat
and boots too. Anything
that isn’t her hands is covered without

sensory frustration.
It’s like she’s doing almost everything

right, though the teachers
are tired of warming her hands.
But they do,
again. They do.

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BIO:

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Kimberly Ann Priest is the winner of the 2024 Backwaters Prize in Poetry from the University of Nebraska Press for her book Wolves in Shells, as well as the author of tether & lung (Texas Review Press) and Slaughter the One Bird (Sundress Publications). An assistant professor in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and Cultures at Michigan State University, her work has appeared in Copper Nickel, Salamander, and Beloit Poetry Journal.

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