Thrush Poetry Journal
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Caitlin Neely 

Season

Day ends at noon.                                   You blackberry, you darken.

Evening—shimmer body,                        shimmer breath and materialize.

Salt-ground, your dress                           high above your ankles,

the world splitting open.                         You are happy.

You think you are the happiest               you have been.

God-tongue,                                           mouth of Greek and mud.

The field kneels.                                      It is yours.



          * The line “the world splitting open” is taken from a letter Sylvia Plath sent to her mother.




Bride with Violets in Her Lap


All night long, snow-struck.

Lake song, the bouquet

behind the dress of a bridesmaid.


All night long, winter.

Bury your hands in him, bury

him. Having come from field,


having come from rust. Hands

shut in prayer. All night long,

scraping of heaven against pine.




          * The title and the line "all night long" are taken from fragment number 30 in Anne Carson's If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho




Caitlin Neely is an MFA candidate at the University of Virginia. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in DIAGRAM, Devil’s Lake and Banango Street. She is the founder of The MFA Years. 




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