Scott Challener was born in Pennsylvania in 1979 and received a BA from the University of Rochester and an MFA in the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. He is a lecturer in Boston University’s writing program and lives in Boston. Challener was a finalist in Narrative’s First Annual Poetry Contest.

Photograph by Thomas Gearty.

The Fact Checkers

by Scott Challener

In a windowless room
they dust off beautiful facts,
facts like pearls and anemones
and nightingales, facts

long harbored in interior harbors
of the mind. Decrepit from neglect,
out on the edge of dying, obituary
facts, and cold, crystalline facts


like diamonds that excel
in perfection
under a monocle.
People on couch
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