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    • May 2013

    David Caplan, Linda Gregerson, Derek Sheffield, A. E. Stallings, Michelle Boisseau, Peter Cole, and more.

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Poetry Magazine

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What is mysterious about loss,

flush of arm pulled from a wilted sleeve,

summer’s urine-tang in autumn leaves?

Let   John Keats light another fag.

Or Brontë refuse the doctor

on her black sateen settee.

For whatever part of   you

may be taken away, you said,

is the scar I will visit first

with my mouth, each time,

as gold visits the thieved till,

sun the obliterated sill,

saying praise you for leaving

me this you, this living still.

Source: Poetry (February 2013).

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MORE FROM THIS ISSUE

This poem originally appeared in the February 2013 issue of Poetry magazine

• Four Memories of Joan Mitchell
  by John Yau
• From “Romanticisms”
  by Dan Beachy-Quick
• Off Center
  by Ange Mlinko

• February 2013 Table of Contents
• Subscribe to Poetry magazine
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More about this poem

Biography

Lisa Russ Spaar's most recent book of poems is Vanitas, Rough (December 2012).  A collection of her essays, The Hide-and-Seek Muse:  Annotations of Contemporary Poetry, is due out in March 2013.  Her awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Weinstein Award for Poetry, the Library of Virginia Award, and a Rona Jaffe Award for Emerging Women Writers. Spaar is a professor at the University of Virginia.

Continue reading this biography

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Poems by Lisa Russ Spaar

• Departures: Chapter One
• How I Might Sound if I Left Myself Alone
• Midas Passional
• Temple On My Knees

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Poem Categorization

SUBJECT Living, Sorrow & Grieving, The Body, Love, Heartache & Loss, Arts & Sciences, Reading & Books

Poetic Terms Couplet, Rhymed Stanza

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