Welcome to National Poetry Month, 2016! We’re celebrating all month long. Each day we will bring you a poem we love–a selection from one of our published or forthcoming collections.
Today’s featured poet is Brenda Sieczkowski, author of Like Oysters Observing the Sun.
Sonnet Malhônnete
.
Je suis réellement d’outre-tombe, et pas de commissions.
—Arthur Rimbaud
.
The roots, blind white, push through my vault of dirt
with giant star-nosed snouts. You can’t remember
the year I pored over Ariel, that endless October
of drone. Or my desire furieuse to mimic how she hurt.
She was Queen Martyr Bee; I was a bug-eyed convert.
I trimmed your grave with honey bells, mon coeur—
but my bereavement’s done. I am no longer amateur;
I’ve celebrated my own burial. I laughed. I ate the dirt.
.
C’est vrai: I lie. I’m neurotic. I read too much poetry
dérangée. At night my room is filled with bête-noires
who smile with your teeth. La tombe will not divide
the mind from memory. I am not dead and never mean to be;
a ghost can haunt a ghost as easily. I watch the stars
and wonder if they push up greenly on the other side.
______________________________
Brenda Sieczkowski’s poems and creative essays have appeared widely in print and on-line journals, including The Colorado Review, Versal, The New England Review, Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, Diagram, The Florida Review, Bone Bouquet, The Seneca Review, Western Humanities Review, Gulf Coast, Dusie, Sidebrow, and Subtropics among others. Her essays have won awards from both Writers at Work and Knee-Jerk Magazine. She has published two chapbooks, Wonder Girl in Monster Land (dancing girl press, 2012) and Fallout & Flotation Devices (Little Red Leaves’ Textile Series, 2014). Like Oysters Observing the Sun, her full-length poetry collection, was published by Black Lawrence Press in 2014. Currently, she lives, teaches, and writes in Nebraska.
