Heather June Gibbons is the author of the poetry collection Her Mouth as Souvenir, winner of the 2017 Agha Shahid Ali Poetry Prize and forthcoming from the University of Utah Press, and a previous chapbook, Flyover. She received an MFA from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was a Callen Graduate Scholar, and she has been the recipient of fellowships and awards from the Academy of American Poets, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. She teaches creative writing at San Francisco State University, and in the community.
SORE SONG
Eros, you are so personless and difficult.
You hamstring us, string us up
and make us want to want only you: desire
dedicated to desire, the poison mandrake
roots and blooms and catches fire.
Your port barely conceals the everlasting
never enough. You are both ambulance
and chaser, stinger and the stung, swollen
welt and stinky balm. For you, we get lashed
to the mast. For you, we do the singing.
author photo : Garrett Gibbons
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dancing girl press, 2018