A Poem by Lisa Hiton

Author: Poetry Editor

May 24, 2016

This week, a poem by Lisa Hiton.

 

LETHARGY

 

I am ill with history.
With watching it happen
and not belonging to it. In the efforts of
lesbianism, I have fallen
asleep. Light
through windows leaves your face
piss-stained and harsh, reflecting
what I’m sure I will die of
back at me, a magnifying glass
over the smooth hard body
in which I cannot exit. We act
like lovers, as if the manners of coming into existence
drop over us again and again like water,
and even though we are hard
bodies, the water, we know, means
never having foot to ground. I know this. The light
does not break through
the casing, yet I wait
for its violence.
I tell myself I want a lover.
________I want a lover.
(What I wanted was a sister.)

——

LISA HITON holds an M.F.A. in poetry from Boston University and an M.Ed. in Arts in Education from Harvard University. Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in Linebreak, The Paris-American, and Hayden’s Ferry Review, among others.