DORSEY CRAFT
Dorsey Craft is the author of Plunder (Bauhan Publishing 2020), and the winner of the May Sarton NH Poetry Prize. Her recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Blackbird, Copper Nickel, Narrative, Mississippi Review, Pleiades, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. She currently teaches at the University of North Florida and serves as Assistant Poetry Editor at Agni.
You meet a boy who touches you in a hall of mirrors, your reflections jagged and unfathomable. You meet a boy who touches you with his foot in a public pool. You meet a boy with blue eyes who can barely look at you when you touch him.
Honestly, my problems themselves feel a little ridiculous to me, even as they overwhelm me. If my speaker thought the worst problem in the world was her not feeling sexy after giving birth, that would not be a speaker people wanted to listen to. My hope is that occasional humor diffuses that complain-y quality a bit. I am always drawn to humor in poetry, especially as a tool to satirize or speak back to power.
May 5, 2024