Sarah Burke

You walk through life

ready to slash a stranger's eye, keys held tight between fingers
under the sparse lights of the parking lot. You know what ready
feels like. Or you don’t. If you don’t, there are many other things
you must not know. Things your mother never had to tell you.
About the night. About men. Where they are softest—
the eyes, the knees, the groin. Maybe you don't carry protection
spells in your pocket. Amulets that scream. Potions that blind.
Maybe you’ve taken many starlit walks without a single thought
of death. You’ve chosen that narrow, unlit alley without hesitation—
where, I imagine, you can go to be truly alone. You can witness
the moon crowning the jagged edge of the shed roofs, overgrown
lilacs hanging over the fence. You don’t have to wonder how deep
their purple goes at midnight. You can see for yourself.
You can hear them whispering. You can touch their leaves, laced
with bites. All the way home, you can smell that sugar on your hands.

________________________________________________________________________________________

Sarah Burke is the author of Blueprints, winner of the 2018 Cider Press Review Editors’ Prize. Her poems have received the Indiana Review Poetry Prize, the James Wright Poetry Prize from Mid-American Review and the Lynda Hull Memorial Poetry Prize from swamp pink. She has work published or forthcoming in 32 Poems, Beloit Poetry Journal, Bicoastal Review, Elysium Review, Pine Hills Review, Ploughshares and other journals. Burke lives in Pittsburgh and holds an MFA in creative writing and environment from Iowa State University. Visit her online at sarahburke.ink.