I have always loved like this: one eye in the center
of a face. My mother’s eye, bloodshot on a September
afternoon. My face gray with the growing cloudcover,
late summer storm. And yes, I have loved the eye
that looked away, with one eye shaded by the raised fist.
I have loved the eye that didn’t see, the eye that saw me naked,
or claimed it had. The eye that loved my shape, then spit
in the chalkline of my body, leaving me its gun.
I have loved my daughter’s prizefighter face,
one eye swollen shut with the effort of being born.
I have loved the finger that jabbed the eye into darkness,
the hand that slapped the eye shut, the hand that nursed it,
the mouth that sang it into sight. I have loved the eye
black, brown, blue, gray, green, nearsighted,
myopic and strained, near tears and distant, watching
the sun while seeking blindness. And, too, I have loved the eye
in the mirror less, but it is always that eye
I am seeking.
work has been published in many journals and anthologies, including Rattle, Glass Poetry Journal, Literary Mama, and Enough: Poems of Resistance and Protest. She is co-editor of the anthology A Dangerous New World: Maine Voices on the Climate Crisis; Associate Poetry Editor of the Maine Review; Featured Poet in the Spring 2020 issue of Frost Meadow Review; A Dibner Fellow at the 2020 Black Fly Writer’s Retreat; and a Hewnoaks Artist Colony Resident (2019 and 2021). Her chapbook, How We Drift, was published by Blue Lyra Press in 2016. Her first full-length collection is forthcoming in 2021 from Terrapin Books. She lives in Portland, Maine with her family.
