Today’s choice

Previous poems

Laura Sheahen

 

 

 

Outsider

What is the ancient curse they know that you don’t
Moving along their mouth-lines and their eyebrows
Lowering their lids, tensing their nods or shrugs

No spell has locked their lips but they are silent
Watching you try, watching you fall again

(Jeweled box with hind-heart bloody in its depths
Mirror that will not show a child its face
Quiet are mice and insects in the castle)

The shoulders shrug            the eyes refuse beseeching
And every throat grows closed     Hushed with the secret

Watching you stagger
Watching you try again

 

 

Laura Sheahen is an American poet who spends part of her time in Tunisia. Her poems have been published in PN Review, The Manhattan Review, The Lincoln Review, and other journals. She writes criticism for The New Criterion, ArtsFuse, The Irish Times, and other publications.  lsheahen.substack.com

Dawn Sands

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sighing in the twilight headlights, particles of wet air commingling.

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