Colleen Abel is the author of Housewifery, a chapbook. A former Diane Middlebrook Poetry Fellow at UW-Madison’s Institute for Creative Writing, her work has appeared in venues such as The Southern Review, West Branch, Notre Dame Review, Mid-American Review, Rhino, Cimarron Review, The Journal, Ploughshares’ blog and elsewhere. She is currently the Joan Beebe Graduate Teaching Fellow at Warren Wilson College.
SELF PORTRAIT AS TEENAGED BOY BEATING SWAN
by Colleen Abel
Thursday, 14 November 2013
Sometimes you have enough–
the cob, the pen twining
their necks to hearts,
all that fidelity.
The dank pond by the council
flats, like it’s bloody Windermere.
You only wanted to wreck
that love-shape they were making.
After, you sat, sad Zeus, and held
the one you’d caught,
stroking its feathered throat
as if to make it sing.
Issue 4 Contents NEXT: Two Poems by Danez Smith
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