Poetry Magazine
Delirium
Such green, such green,
this apple-, pea- and celadon,
this emerald and pine and lime
unsheathed to make
a miser weep, to make his puny
bunions shrink; these seas
and seas of peony, these showy
tons of rose
to urge a musted monk disrobe,
an eremitic nun unfold;
such breathy, breathy moth
and wasp, such gleeful,
greedy bee to bid
the bully hearts of cops
and bosses sob,
to tell a stubby root unstub, a rusted
hinge unrust, the slug unsalt;
to stir the fusted
lungs to brim, the skin to sting,
the dormant,
tinning tongue to singe and hymn.
Source: Poetry (December 2009).
Biography
Poet Hailey Leithauser was born in Baltimore and raised in Maryland and Central Florida. Over the years Leithauser has worked as a salad chef, real estate office manager, gourmet food salesperson, freelance copy editor, phone surveyor, bookstore clerk, fact checker, and, most recently, senior reference librarian at the Department of Energy in Washington, D.C.
Returning to writing after a break of several decades, her work . . .
Poems by Hailey Leithauser
Poem Categorization
SUBJECT Nature, Trees & Flowers
POET’S REGION U.S., Mid-Atlantic
Poetic Terms Rhymed Stanza
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