Mistakes

Doritt Carroll

there are so many mistakes to make
in a day they crowd together like beans
in a jar faces in the window of a train

my mistakes are refugees running
across borders into countries
where they can’t read the signs

my mistakes are roofs collapsing
under shelling windows exploding
my mistakes are bundles of dirty blankets

water that makes you sick
bridges of which only a thin strip remains
my mistakes are children screaming

for their mother my mistake is
i am their mother they are screaming
for me

Doritt Carroll is a native of Washington, DC. She received her undergraduate and law degrees from Georgetown University. Doritt is the winner of Harbor Review’s 2020 Laura Lee Washburn chapbook prize for her chapbook A Meditation on Purgatory. Her poems have appeared in Main Street Rag, North American Review, Coal City Review, Eunoia Review, and Cherry Tree, among others. Her collection GLTTL STP was published by Brickhouse Books in 2013. Her chapbook Sorry You Are Not An Instant Winner was published in 2017 by Kattywompus. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.