Epithalamium

1 Minute Read Time

Red knot, some mercury, some wax— 
detritus of one love or another. To fix

the darkness that comes not from nothing, 
from the swell of wings over light;

full in flight the snow drifts, the flick 
of aperture trying for a photograph

of ambition—that drive we had to loop 
it all in: charcoal and vodka and dust.

Is it ever a single moment? Is it ever 
a revolutionary action? I asked

for a single life—too big a glut, a feast 
of fortune. I built another face for you

and buried it. Those amulets to sail us 
into another life. Red knot, real knot—

hitch me, done and undone.

Caroline Crew

is an assistant professor of creative writing at the University of Central Missouri, where she serves as Editor in Chief of Pleiades: Literature in Context. Author of the essay collection Other Girls to Burn, winner of the AWP Prize, her next book is a poetry collection, Don’t Cut Your Own Bangs, from YesYes Books. Her poetry and prose appears in POETRY, Kenyon Review and The Believer, among others. Crew holds degrees from the University of St Andrews, the University of Oxford, the University of Massachusetts, and Georgia State University. Originally from Kernow (Cornwall), Crew lives in Kansas City, where she co-owns the bookstore, Turnsol Books.

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