The Three Fates: Manguso, Adams, Mathias

I’ve been busy and have fallen down on my promise to myself to post a couple poems a day all December long. I’ll endeavor to do better.



Sarah Manguso
Alas They Sighed, You Were Not Like Us


For once they had nothing to say about my death
And I killed them.
After that I put on a Neil Young record in my poem because he used to write in fevers
And because there’s something about beauty that’s always going to be a problem.

They told me if I played “Cinnamon Girl” enough times, they would love me.
They didn’t have to hold me
And they sent me money and macrame belts
Spelling the words Jesus and O to Know Your Dark Uplifted Heart.
I loved them
And I was listening to myself
And writing down what I heard.
They were pretty sure it was about them.


* * *


Carrie Olivia Adams
A History of Drowning, 2


Why does it move so?
Why does it break or ask to be broken?

Her fingers stay tied. She is sitting on her hands to save them.

What if this too were to flower?
What color might it be in the dark?
Or with his back turned?


* * *


Louise Mathias
Ringlet


While you were busy
qualifying butterflies. Taking the liminal stretch

of each pinked wing. Fawn is a soundtrack for beauty. Wood nymphs,
meadowbrowns, ringlets. Jezebels, parchment, pins.

Outside; the sound of the sun
becoming more of what she was—

the velvet slug of their bodies (Nabokov

said they were girls).

But also, I wanted to tell you
there are winds that you won’t own.

There’s a file on you, somewhere—

Stiff corridor, this.