When I got it wrong at school—missed a word, could not recite the long division tables—I would lock my knees beneath my little plywood desk in back where all the tall ones sat, and sneak my uniform sleeve up and bite down on my forearm, make myself keep quiet, doing that, not crying; gnashing hard with my gapped teeth until the dotted "O" sunk in because I couldn’t hold my breath, so had to clench my skin while no sobs flayed my lungs: those lightless rooms where loud girls kept themselves, and stayed unsorry.
Copyright © 2005 Frannie Lindsay. From Where She Always Was. Used with permission of Utah State University Press.
for Chris Martin
To you
through whom
these sudden days
blowse & hum
thirst & quench
a tide of tensing trees
days tick by
beats in a song
my body grows
fuller each day
I think my life
has always been
for this quiet
darkness
your forehead
& eyelashes
face pressed
to my breast
your skin a texture
electrifying
my fingertips
wool on cotton
wool on glass
the fibers rise
& I can’t sleep
for being alive
Copyright © 2016 by Mary Austin Speaker. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on July 12, 2016, by the Academy of American Poets.