Author’s note: the poem began with one of those everyday struggles with a heavy door, the kind that doesn’t want to open and then apparently isn’t going to close and then suddenly bangs shut, maybe catching people in it, when it occurred to me that a whole lot of not-so-literal “institutional” doors are designed this way as well, often on purpose. However, doors that shut people out also shut people in.
It was made to be
almost too heavy
to move, though
the word they used
was strong.
To keep out.
To keep in.
To stifle fire.
Mobs. Noise.
Song. When
it has been forced
open, it is slow
to swing shut. So
slow you think
you have time
to slide through
until the second
it suddenly
finally bangs
with a crash
like a guillotine,
a black iron gong.
Whatever side
you find yourself on
is wrong.
Catherine Carter’s most recent of four collections with LSU Press is By Stone and Needle (2025), winner of the press’ L. E. Phillabaum award for the year’s best volume of LSUP poetry. Jacar Press has also printed her two chapbooks, and her work has appeared in Poetry, Ploughshares, RHINO, Asheville Poetry Review, and Best American Poetry 2009, among others. She is a professor of English at Western Carolina University.
