Rage Hezekiah is a Cave Canem, Ragdale, and MacDowell Fellow who earned her MFA from Emerson College. She is a recipient of the Saint Botolph Emerging Artist Award and she serves as Interviews Editor at The Common. Her forthcoming collection, Yearn, is a 2021 Diode Editions Book Contest winner. She is the author of Unslakable (Paper Nautilus Press, 2019) and Stray Harbor (Finishing Line Press, 2019). Rage’s poems have appeared in the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, The Cincinnati Review, The Colorado Review, and many other journals and anthologies. You can find more of her work at ragehezekiah.com. Photo credit: Sarah Newman

CENTO FOR LONGING by Rage Hezekiah

I become convinced 
of the infinite curve 
of love, write a poem
in which you soften 
me like gerunds. Me
a small noise, me 
without a mouth. I 
have always loved 
too much, or not 
enough. I want 
a home, a new 
slick leaf unfurling 
like a fist to an open
palm. My voice 
is an unnamed animal 
in the kingdom 
of impossible things, 
and I am made 
by loss. I make you 
a box of darkness 
with a bird in its heart. 
I’ve been standing
by water my whole 
damn life trying 
to get saved. I don’t 
know about you, 
but I just want 
to be held. 





lines by: Nate Marshall, Meg Day, Phillip B. Williams, Dorianne Laux, Aaron Coleman, Ada Limón, Nicole Terez Dutton, Terrence Hayes, Tiana Clark, Mary Ruefle.

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