For Zoe. From Zoe. Zoe.

I am a woman built of twigs, I am
a pulsing ruby heart. I am the bottom of the ocean
and the great monsters who sleep there. There are trees
inside my lungs. I am making
my own air. I have expanded
and condensed, and in these ears
four galaxies collide.





please, please, please, go listen to Zoe Keating right now.
illustration by Audrey Kawasaki
you might also be interested in lung trees
or sea monsters
or colliding galaxies.
I know I am.

Heptonstall

Sylvia Plath, pale patron saint
of all this rising sadness, I must know
that this is the last life,
this unrepentant madness.

In Heptonstall the chalky door
of your smallest and final cocoon
bears the scars of the nails of virgins,
the glittery spots of dried-tear moons.

Someone has left you sugary sweet peas,
wrapped in thin pink paper. I hope
they did not wake you. I hope
there is no waking.

From: roxanne@gmail.com

Heartsick boys wooed me wildly with your words.
It was you I loved, unknowing--

I ask you the same question now
a thousand times over, my own tongue
faltering into space, your silences as long
as nos.







photograph by Sarah Walker

Unrequited Poetry, Episode 2

Ghost
for Susan Orlean

I saw it, you know,
On a shelf in the quiet movie-man’s home—
Did you? I
Touched it, let my fingers fall
Into the magnetic pull
Of its heartbreaking white ribbons.

I looked for you
Where you said you would be,
In the gold light at the bees’ dance,
But all behind them
Was blurred and pollinated,
And you did not emerge.

I have crept toward
The shape of you: subconscious selections
In afternoons, hair dye,
Potted plants, all
Give me away, my embarrassing thirst
For that cool slenderness,
Success.

I touched the ghost
In the quiet movie-man’s house, and knew
In that instant
It wasn’t real. And
Did you, in all
Your fruitlessness, freeze
To see a glass house full of them,
Blue in the electric light?

I wonder if you stayed
To the end, if you touched them
Not breathing (like I did), if you
Read my letter, if you saw
My ghost.