Hysterectomy/Recovery

Though I didn’t know how to begin or believe, I held in
myself expectation. Awareness. A palpable fit. Every garden

a window through which I petalled off hopes. There was nothing

so alarming as a sky. Who knew if an elegance walked invisible
beside me or on stolen feet. Or if all elegance is the act of being

invisible after all. If after all the spirit is indivisible from the body.

Or a glamor slit from this spilt sack of skin. I have never had
nor been enough. Every sundress is an ache. What a pink

unpleasantness, the idea of touch. An earth let loose and loss

the only record of its revolutions, its unguarded roots. A sky
rinsing from itself the pointless trash of spring.

 
Emma Bolden

Emma Bolden is the author of medi(t)ations (Noctuary Press) and Maleficae (GenPop Books). A Barthelme Prize and Spoon River Poetry Review Editor’s Prize winner, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Best American Poetry, The Best Small Fictions, Gulf Coast, StoryQuarterly, The Pinch, Prairie Schooner, Conduit, and Copper Nickel. She serves as a Senior Reviews Editor for Tupelo Quarterly.

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The Imposition of Ashes

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Angels of Paradise