The Post Office of My Childhood
BEN
The post office of my childhood was a blonde
brick building with stone steps, and a grand
entrance, heavy doors,
dark
FRANK
Mine was a general store in a farm town,
a single red gas pump in front,
and a woman, we called,
an old maid, a spinster
in charge
EMILY
Mine was a block of iron and glass between
brownstones, a Nathan’s hotdog sign, yellow & green,
in New York. A dyke sorted the mail
and barked instructions.
We all stayed in line.
ANNA
Mine is here, my home
town, this one room I share with
the two of you. I stuff the boxes of neighbors,
and give out the codes, one turn to the right, one
turn to the left.
Elaine Sexton is a maker, critic, teacher, and librettist. The Post Office: An Opera in Poems is her sixth collection of poetry, and first libretto, written in collaboration with composer Laura Kaminsky. The Post Office will debut at the Brooklyn Academy of Arts in May 2026. Her poems are widely anthologized and published in journals including American Poetry Review, Poetry, Ploughshares, and O! the Oprah Magazine. A member of the National Book Critics Circle, former senior editor of ARTnews, and visual arts editor for Tupelo Quarterly, her art and book reviews have appeared in Art in America, ARTnews, Art New England, Pleiades, Prairie Schooner, and On the Seawall. Sexton lives in New York and teaches at the Sarah Lawrence College Writing Institute. elainesexton.org