Terry Ann Wright

Dornröschen

After Sylvia Plath's “Morning Song”

I can never get away from your
damp fingertips, your whiskey moth-breath
mouthing messages whose meaning flickers
just out of hearing. I see you among
walls built of words and glue, the
radiator gusting wet heat that peels flat
sheets down at every corner. Pink
pads and bitten nails pick at the roses
on the wallpaper. You and I
forever on either side of words. Wake

and hear me from your memory. To
your bedside I glide and stare:  listen:
we want the same thing. We want a
reckoning or a forgetting. I’m on the far
side of knowing what holy sea
heaves inside you, or what chill moves
you to tug the blanket higher in
your marriage bed. While you sleep, I take my
time plotting dreams to sigh into your ear.

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Terry Ann Wright’s chapbook mad honey was released in 2018 by dancing girl press. Her debut chapbook Nature Studies was published by Sadie Girl Press in 2015; the title poem was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, her third nomination. Her poetry has appeared in The Rise Up Review, The Harpoon Review, Chiron Review, Angel City Review, Spectrum, Carnival and East Jasmine Review, and in several anthologies by Cadence Collective, Sadie Girl Press and Picture Show Press.