We are a public forum committed to collective reasoning and the imagination of a more just world. Join today to help us keep the discussion of ideas free and open to everyone, and enjoy member benefits like our quarterly books.
We are a public forum committed to collective reasoning and the imagination of a more just world. Join today to help us keep the discussion of ideas free and open to everyone, and enjoy member benefits like our quarterly books.
This is the world
we get and only
this, the blood and the water mingle,
and wordless
the moan among lilies and honeysuckle,
the branches shake
like my arms after rough
sex I want
you fresh from the hunt
your face smeared with the perfume
I leave on your mouth
it’s this overgrowth that reminds me
of how much
we are overrun
with the excess and the lush,
I have pressed
this hand to your plush
forget
that I said this.
This world
we made is the only one we get,
and it splays to a golden
center
and it singles us out
for sacrifice.
This poem was one of the winners of the 2012 “Discovery” Poetry Contest.
Rebecca Hazelton is author of the forthcoming Fair Copy and teaches creative writing at Beloit College.
Contributions from readers enable us to provide a public space, free and open, for the discussion of ideas. Join this effort – become a supporting reader today.
Vital reading on politics, literature, and more in your inbox. Sign up for our Weekly Newsletter, Monthly Roundup, and event notifications.
As Roe is struck down by the Supreme Court, we bring together recent and archival essays to assess what is at stake—and how we might move from reproductive rights to reproductive justice.
Theorist Hil Malatino offers a compelling account of the persistent bad feelings with which trans people often struggle—but it comes with fashionable academic hang-ups that need to be reconsidered.
The systems that harm animals go hand in hand with systems that harm humans. Combating them requires inter-species solidarity.
A political and literary forum, independent and nonprofit since 1975. Registered 501(c)(3) organization. Learn more about our mission