by Featured Writer:

Marisa Siegel

Briana Finegan, Untitled (Marisa and Emily), paper collage, 4 x 6 inches, 2022. Courtesy of the artist.

Dear Emily —

Marisa Siegel | Nov 2022 | Issue 20

Dear Emily,

I am not
writing to you.

We both
know why
the bird hovers.

I make a new code.

Language is
one kind of key;

you question
the decision
to take
yourself away.

The world is washed
in yellow,
& behind each
door —

another door.

Thin-skinned thing

Honest is I can’t
be present.

Pushing back is
grasping straw.

Biting, bumbling
because how —

blood on my lip
like a gift,
boxed.

The corner & its
adjacent cobweb.

Bottle, neck,
bruised
ego —

honest is I can
& won’t —

I didn’t look
back, might
as well have.

What is out
of my hands;

what never wasn’t
underneath,
lurking, low-
level threat —

what has never
seen daylight
cannot know
daylight.

But I am finding
sun in strange
places now —

I am holding out
hope like a gift.

Dear Emily,

What isn’t love poem,
isn’t attempt
to salvage wreck.

Perhaps necessary
gesture at sky,
or only shrug.

When I say wouldn’t I mean
couldn’t, mean I give
more than you want.

I craft sentences
that etch memory
into bone.

But I fail
in my essays —
break pencil on paper;

alone, I stare up
searching out echo
of starlight, one worn
& aged wish.

Nothing about me
is honest, or
its opposite —

I am either empty
& lost or wholly
saved.

What isn’t love poem,
isn’t attempt
to explicate pain,

to clarify circle
& hunt line.

Against “hope”

Doesn’t burn —
infinite unrealized potential
smoldering.

Clobbered till language
ceased meaning.

Feral belief,
dangerous fuse.

Complicated circle
rendered warily.

The ocean,
eight hundred miles away.

The canary,
winged warning bell.

Heart breaking:
not present / absent.

Singed edge of story —
for what
dancing moon.

The window
& looking through:

together / apart.
A century-old willow tree,

it weeps.

Marisa Siegel holds an MFA from Mills College in Oakland, CA. Her essay "Inherited Anger" appears in the anthology Burn It Down and her poetry chapbook FIXED STARS is out now from Burrow Press. She is senior acquiring editor for trade at Northwestern University Press, and editor-at-large for The Rumpus.

Briana Finegan is a collage artist and illustrator based in Chicago, IL. She is interested in discovering what visual elements can mean when taken out of context, and her work explores American pop culture, body horror, memory, and sexual anxieties. She once punctuated a conversation about Wuthering Heights by pulling a copy out of her pocket and yelling “Do you think this is a f*cking game?”