Maggie Glover

BAD GIRL'S LOVE SONG
(after Sylvia)

There are no little things to me,
Not movies or pennies or weapons of choice.
We arrive and then we leave.

An opium dash in my ballerina tea,
My wax wings, tart and rustbelt voice:
These are no little things to me.

All matters. My toad garden beneath the bully tree
Where we itched euphoria with thirsty force?
Still, you arrived and you will leave

Like the ghosts of sex on St. John's Eve
With cupboard love and smoke and noise.
Because there are no little things to me,

I smuggle my dead into the sea
And dream of rope and bare feet and ice,
But never the men who arrive and leave.

Before I am caught, I bleed and flee
Leaving behind nothing but this advice
(Because there are no little things to me):
We all arrive; we all will leave.

Maggie Glover is originally from Pittsburgh, PA. Recently, her poetry has appeared in Carrier Pigeon, jubilat, Ninth Letter, and other literary journals. Her debut collection of poems, How I Went Red, was published by Carnegie Mellon University Press in Feb. of 2014. A selection of her work is included in 12 Women: An Anthology of Poems, released by Carnegie Mellon University Press in Dec. of 2014. Upcoming projects include a collaborative poetry manuscript with poet Isaac Pressnell, an excerpt of which will appear in BEST AMERICAN EXPERIMENTAL WRITING 2015. She lives on a beach in Los Angeles, CA.