Zoë Gabriel’s poems have appeared in Poetry Midwest, Southern Ocean Review, Oysters & Chocolate, Salt River Review, Locust Magazine, Centrifugal Eye, Unlikely Stories, AntiMuse and Cadenza. Zoë dyes her hair but is naturally tall. She loves books, languages, spicy food, and colorful socks. She is from Europe and lives in Maryland.

Zoë Gabriel

They speak

a whirlpool of inanity

crippling

 

That's so weird

That's so cool

It isn't you, it's me

I will run as fast as I can

Old habits die hard

Nothing is the matter

God, why do you always have to be so…

 

When I was a child

I couldn't wait for it to end

Now that I am grown

I see as through a glass darkly

 

I trail monsters in my wake

shelter them in my backpack

hide them between the pages

of my research notes

nurse them back to weak-lunged

blood-poisoned stubborn health

in my cupped hands

the bomb shelter of my fists

 

The dialectic of enlightenment has nothing

on this need to recognize oneself in everything

leveling as a California earthquake

searing as a mirage

on flesh parched for integrity

for a true sense of islands

rooted to the same ocean floor