NIGHTMARE WITH SIX DEAD POETS 

Roberto Rodriguez-Estrada

I am inhabited by a cry.
— Sylvia Plath

I was houred, trawled out the feathered rain-
bow of dreaming. Dragged the black caul of lace I wore
to mourn the long-gone tide: bean green sea,
without blue. Receding. Evaporated. A tear, a tear —

terrific fracture down my spine. Pleasure
to meet thee. O departed. O dilating
void of me. That same dawning, hatched
hardly. A famished throng of all my dead
hooked their sharp nails through my scars, tearing.
Slaked the thick woolen ache of their shadows 
                                                                           with the flakes of my scalp.

Soon, soon I was reduced: a rib
of moon. Shibboleth, Shibboleth — my cork-
screwed tongue. Mistaken. Abandon. 

Stinging nettles and rosary pea in the cauldron, brewing
all for me. They said I wanted it that way. To be chaste, pure. 

My skin wrinkled, boiled, sloughed — my sutures 
surrendered to my sins, which seethed. Which seethed. 
Bitten plum, bitter seed. I was all wound. All wound.
                                                                            The size of this room.

ROBERTO RODRIGUEZ-ESTRADA is an MFA candidate in Fiction at the University of Virginia, where they are a Poe/ Faulkner Fellow. A poet and fiction writer, they are completing a novel.

Originally published March 2021 in poiesis 2.1 by w the trees.