Jessica Poli

To My First Lover

And here we are now in the place
where the trees flicker on and off.
I came here, climbed the mountain
despite knowing that you didn’t want
to be saved. The two of us stand in a circle
of breadcrumbs and broken glass,
a dead horse lashed to my back.
You look at me from your blue mouth.
A lake of gin sloshes behind your eyes.
The horse twitches, and I toe
the ground with my boot. All of us
are coiled, full of green longing.
So that we might find our way down,
we hold out hope for the light.

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Jessica Poli is the author of four chapbooks, most recently Canyons (BatCat Press, 2018) and co-editor of the collection More in Time: A Tribute to Ted Kooser (University of Nebraska Press, 2021). Her work has appeared in Best New Poets, Southern Indiana Review, The Adroit Journal and Redivider, among others. She is a PhD student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, founder and editor of Birdfeast and Assistant Poetry Editor of Prairie Schooner.