Chloe Honum

Ballerina in Winter

Listen to Chloe Honum read her piece:

Through a season given to storms, I wake at dawn to practice. I drag aside the living room chairs, like heavy dreams, and play softly a tape of ballet music. Sometimes I go outside to work on grand jetés, to run barefoot and push off from wet concrete, while Mother and Sister sleep. They know that I am changing, but not how quick. Sometimes the sky is violet above a jury of silver birds. Sometimes mist. Sometimes lightning slices the hills straight through and doesn’t hit a nerve.

 

Chloe Honum was raised in Auckland, New Zealand. She is the recipient of a Ruth Lilly Fellowship and winner of The Missouri Review’s Audio Contest in Poetry. Her work has appeared in The Paris Review, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. Find her online at www.chloehonum.com.