Sophie Klahr
Fiction
Sophie Klahr is the author of the poetry collections Two Open Doors in a Field (University of Nebraska Press), Meet Me Here at Dawn (YesYes Books), and the collaborative prose work There Is Only One Ghost in the World (Fiction Collective Two), written alongside Corey Zeller, which won the Ronald Suckenick Award for Innovative Fiction. She lives in Los Angeles. Follow her on IG at sophieandthechoices.
(Non)fictions
I am back in the arms of Florida and seeing everywhere, for the first time since she’s died, my
grandmother’s favorite chain store everywhere. I want to buy a little something, like her: leopard print
handbag, leopard print hat. She was a typist, a collector of teapots. For lunch, she always laid out cold
cuts and plastic-y cheese. Above the black vinyl couch, framed prints of red-crowned cranes, her
bedroom always in some gauze-pink light. I try to list what I know she loved: key lime pie, coconut
chocolates, Lifesavers. Whitefish salad. In the last months, on morphine, she recognized me. Her
tongue searched for my name then found it, as if having forgotten that oranges existed she’d suddenly
tasted one. I miss her more dead than I ever did alive. Is that love?
“ This is a slice from a book in progress, a kaleidoscopic work in conversation with my recently published collaborative book There Is Only One Ghost in the World. The slice above glimpses one thread of this new book, one concerned with/rattled by the stories we tell ourselves about who we believe we are.”