As in a house of mourning / cover the mirrors / Save yourself from
yourself / Open the windows / Feed your history to night / Do not
wrestle / against your story / let it keep happening / then kill it— /
the editor who invited you for coffee / a manila folder of poems /
meticulously typed / and tucked beneath your arm / all those beats
and breaks / silenced / as he thrust his hand on your hip, saying
Sweetheart, try your hair in a bun / and What about glasses / If you wore glasses
men wouldn’t notice you so much / Or your colleague who poked / a bruise
on your thigh / guessing at its origins / Or the man who made the
bruise / Honey, you’re not as stupid as you look— / Cast it out / until the
night is so full of the feathers of your thoughts / it grows the giant
wings of a crow / takes off— / Now lie before the curtained mirrors
/ Forget what you look like / For better is a wandering eye / than the
two you clench shut / waiting for him to finish
Epistle from the Hospital for Harassment
Jenny Molberg’s debut collection of poetry, Marvels of the Invisible, won the 2014 Berkshire Prize (Tupelo Press, 2017). Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Ploughshares, The Missouri Review, Copper Nickel, Boulevard, Redivider, Poetry International, The Orison Anthology, Best New Poets, and other publications. In 2017, she was the Mark Strand scholar at the Sewanee Writers Conference. She teaches at the University of Central Missouri and is Co-editor of Pleiades. Find her online at jennymolberg.com