9.7 / July 2014

there is a hell you love

in your absence      is the screech
of swine as      the shower comes
on and in the steam that fills      this cell there is
a kind of hell      you love being born
in the red muck      a jade blooms
in only the most precise      winter light a cross-
section of the kalanchoe      reveals kalanchoe
the wild is the garden work of mourning      a woman
whose hair      has become too thick for rain


Leia Darwish is an MFA candidate in poetry at Virginia Commonwealth University, where she serves as the lead associate editor of Blackbird. Poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Blackbird, Copper Nickel, Hidden City Quarterly, and The Pinch.
9.7 / July 2014

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