#fiona stanton

[lifeinpoetry]

Because I am in this skin—and in and in, I dream they dragged the lake & found nothing, I dream like a brother dreams:                                Imperfect,     by your side & not.

— Fiona Stanton, from “Red Lions,” published in The Adroit Journal

[lifeinpoetry]

Far from the ruins of my girlhood I am led away

I will open     I will Open it for you

into restlessness, a servant shadow of myself, a priestess ingénue Bloodlet as ghost     Noseless & Beheld    blighted youth:

I will be twenty-four and holy as vigil light,        I will do it all to break my selfless heart.

— Fiona Stanton, from “The Devout Childhood of St. Elizabeth of Hungary,” published in The Adroit Journal

[satuniii]

Ritual bore me a child of mud, orchid and root:

       we bathe like we are lauded, until

our lungs collapse & the rope singed

       into our necks melts all away.

- Fiona Stanton, ‘Grave Goods’

[satuniii]

I feel gamey & hot beneath my woven bed linens

to the point that I weep,        loose myself on the serving 

women, bite down hard on my palm so it makes 

mothers of them all.

-Fiona Stanton, ‘The Devout Childhood of St. Elizabeth of Hunagry’

[satuniii]

I am six years old 

all I have is milk teeth. Baby’s 

belly pink swimsuit          Latin lanugo.

- Fiona Stanton, ‘Red Lions’