She was born hermaphroditic, she was addicted,
she was unlucky in love, she was not
a pretty or dainty girl,
and she was crablike and quiet. Troubled, she drifted
closer to the wrong side of grief
in the darkening afternoon. Her roots exposed,
rain fell where the thorny stars sparkled
and her dark hair caught in a mounting panic.

Surviving looks like:
hurry              you’ll burn              on the horizon

Ava C. Cipri

---

NOTE: Remix poem sourced from Gregory Magurie’s Wicked “Prologue” HarperCollins (1995).

Ava C. Cipri is a poetry editor for The Deaf Poets Society: An Online Journal of Disability Literature & Art. She holds an MFA from Syracuse University, where she served on the staff of Salt Hill. Ava’s poetry and nonfiction appears or is forthcoming in The Fem, Literary Orphans, Menacing Hedge, Roanoke Review, and scissors & spackle, among others. She resides at: www.avaccipri.com

Artwork: Brooke Shaden, Ripples and Waves
Website: http://brookeshaden.com/gallery/

19 Dec This entry was published on December 19, 2016 at 12:01 am and is filed under 22 (December 2016), Archive, Poetry. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.