If you map the / Edges / of your hollowed out heart,
pay attention to / Creatures / at the meeting
zones who nuzzle you back into gentleness / Observe / sites of abundance:
today coneflower and bee balm, / Tomorrow / bees
and butterflies aplenty. / Open / your eyes to the wetlands of your grief,
but also to the mounds of sedge that double as / Nests / to the red-knobbed coot,
and to the Great / Egret / snaking her neck towards the leafy ruins.
—
A queer writer, Sarah Giragosian is the author of the poetry collections Queer Fish, a winner of the American Poetry Journal Book Prize (Dream Horse Press, 2017), The Death Spiral (Black Lawrence Press, 2020), and Mother Octopus, co-winner of the 2024 Halcyon Prize (Middle Creek Press). In 2023, the University of Akron Press released her co-edited craft anthology, Marbles on the Floor: How to Assemble a Book of Poems. Her poems and essays have appeared in such journals as Orion, Ecotone, The Missouri Review, Prairie Schooner, and Terrain.org, among others.
