Reading Plath in Richmond
by Michaela Mayer
How full you are of spent loveliness,
like a fox pelt flattened to the road, white-tipped
tail wafting with the passing of each car.
I love your emptiness, but also when you wax round
and pregnant as a harvest moon above
the city: full of life-giving, tide-pulling mania,
though you are miles from the sea, locked in
the teeth of a steel skyline. I would love you as a doe
leaping across the highway to the forest,
or as a sturgeon sluicing through the river which
bisects the city, swimming away from the hook who
caught your cheek. But, my wonder, you
are none of these. See you rise tall and dignified
from behind your mythos, your animal apotheosis:
backbone straight as any other’s.
Michaela Mayer is a 26-year-old elementary school teacher and poet from Virginia. Her works have been previously published in Perhappened, Feral Poetry, Survivor Lit, Claw & Blossom, Barren Magazine, and others. She has poems forthcoming with Olit, The Lickety~Split, and Monstering Mag and can be found on Twitter @mswannmayer5.
