Eugenia Hepworth Petty is the author of the chapbook Pamyat Selo/Memory Village (Premier Poets Chapbook Series, 2007) and the micro chapbook People Live Here (Origami Poets Project, 2015). Her writing and photography have appeared in a variety of journals, including The Sun Magazine, Monkeybicycle, Anti-Heroin Chic, In Posse Review and The Literary Bohemian. She holds an MA in Poetics from New College of California, and lives in the Pacific Northwest. www.eugeniahepworth.com
A Savage Bitter Beauty
It was always anywhere. Castro and Market on a summer’s night. The Village in fall or Washington Street downtown. There was gold in the dirt—sparkling from dirty panes of glass. Crevices full of lies. I’d drink in the mauve heat around your body before it turned cold at night. Small blue oranges, fuzz-balled with white growths lined up like Christmas balls on the window sills. Tiny memories and tinted gauze filled the mirrors before dawn. Sometimes you’d nod out all night, your hair flowing out over the green spirals and silver squares that covered the kitchen table. I’d lay my head down beside yours and watch the rivers rush across your eyelids. There is a savage bitter beauty in a bloodless palm.