In the Gray
by Emma Bolden
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I was his weekend his midnight his five calls at five a.m. for five hours I was no lover I was his later his ladder I was pared & parted I was his she’s creeping a round the wallpaper down the hall with the darkness sitting on his chest his three a.m. I was highway his road beer I was waiting on the other line while he waited at the liquor store gas station grocery six pack hidden at the bottom of the bag did I think she’d like his roses did I think she’d live his lilies did I know anything to do about all of these graces these grooves into which suffering settled like a swan songed over & into an outing in every dream a field greened I wanted liquor lapped up like a cat stealing your babies’ breath I was the woman who flew who broomed him I was the man who fished in his fly I was the one who didn’t want to say because his far body couldn’t find a way to enter mine because I didn’t want to keep wanting I was a low rung on his ladder but he held my head down anyway forced his man his hood his words into my mouth every pill & every needle every night stripped down to its singular & acute angles of alone every moment I sang & sweat & suffered in the caving shelter of this bed-self was & is only my own absolute fault my sweet cyanide a capsule bed & a bad radio a voice made of wind & France shuttered in its grace did I know this pleasure was its own gun all of my evenings heaved & helloed loved into lust & clutch climbed into bed & a body I have a hunger an open throating through midnight for mercy o lord let me be my own peace |
Emma Bolden is the author of three full-length collections of poetry – House Is An Enigma (forthcoming from Southeast Missouri State University Press), medi(t)ations (Noctuary Press, 2016) and Maleficae (GenPop Books, 2013) – and four chapbooks. The recipient of a 2017 Creative Writing Fellowship from the NEA, her work has appeared in The Best American Poetry, The Best Small Fictions, and such journals as the Mississippi Review, The Rumpus, StoryQuarterly, Prairie Schooner, New Madrid, TriQuarterly, the Indiana Review, Shenandoah, the Greensboro Review, and The Journal. She currently serves as Associate Editor-in-Chief for Tupelo Quarterly.
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June 2018
Emma Bolden is the author of three full-length collections of poetry – House Is An Enigma (forthcoming from Southeast Missouri State University Press), medi(t)ations (Noctuary Press, 2016) and Maleficae (GenPop Books, 2013) – and four chapbooks. The recipient of a 2017 Creative Writing Fellowship from the NEA, her work has appeared in The Best American Poetry, The Best Small Fictions, and such journals as the Mississippi Review, The Rumpus, StoryQuarterly, Prairie Schooner, New Madrid, TriQuarterly, the Indiana Review, Shenandoah, the Greensboro Review, and The Journal. She currently serves as Associate Editor-in-Chief for Tupelo Quarterly.
read more...
June 2018