“Lament with Six Stitches,” by Colleen Abel (Poetry ’04)

2004 poetry alum Colleen Abel was recently featured in the LEON Literary Review. Read an excerpt of “Lament with Six Stitches” below:

Lament with Six Stitches

Everyone who looks at you sees
my face in your face

but this is a part of you I do not know:
one of the only parts, this inside of your skin, 

many layers down, flanged with white 
and pulpy-red, exactly as a split fruit.

Less than I ever do I see myself in you now—
blood trail down your shirt, the hole gaping 

between your eyes—I, who am so careful,
who only came close once to slipping

out from this world’s grasp: the day you 
came into it, a noose around your neck

that almost killed us both. And here 
we are again. 

Read this poem in its entirety, as well as another, here: http://leonliteraryreview.com/issue-10-colleen-abel/