Here, in this Ithaca that I am writing,
even daylight is
acicular. There are words
for what I am doing to this
landscape—calumniation, a slurring of—O
iced apogees and troughs,
I have ruined. Death
to breath, a semibreve of fantastic, held
hostage. I have journeyed away
from this idyllic
home—swallowed hard—a mess
of neologisms for quiet,
finitude. I am nothing
but onus. As much basilisk as
guileless. These chipped teeth, reckless
glyphs. I have slithered through blue
nights, bodies of neon, nouns asking
my—lost, blank sea—home. Homer,
tell me I can escape. The lotus blooms,
not my ending. I am trying to
capitulate to winsomeness,
these gorges. Body of
light—I could be—I could
gorge on sun. Pale limbs, pale
belly, pale all over—I am
a monster of hunger. You are
the definition of happy,
a father says. His daughter
gumming a cookie next to
me, idyllic. I once was
a memory—convertible, wind—
not my father’s but he is
shotgun, there. I, too, an avatar
for joy, then. I knew something.
The sky, my tangled hair, all
good—I could return to, again.
Stevie Edwards is a Michigander but currently resides in Ithaca, NY, where she is an MFA candidate in creative writing at Cornell University. Her first full-length collection of poetry, Good Grief (Write Bloody Publishing 2012), recently received the Devil’s Kitchen Reading Award and the Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPY) Bronze Prize for Poetry. Her latest chapbook, Atomic Girl, is forthcoming from Tired Hearts Press. She is the Editor-in-Chief of Muzzle Magazine.