Love Letter by Rachel Abramowitz


 
 
I.

I’m an unsmall rabbit
at dusk
under the pine tree.
The moon is not out
but I do not know the moon
anyway.
As the light fades
I find a good blossom.
 
 
II.

I am a serpent-head fish
on the table of a small house
in the woods
because there is little time left
in the day
and someone must remove my bones
and it will not
be me.
 
 
III.

I have a new teacher.
She is a white shell on the beach
and sometimes
she is a rotting crab leg on the beach.
Often she is just a rock,
or a rock that is more bone than rock.
 
 
VI.

I am a strawberry, like you.
But I have been shaded from the sun
and so am malnourished
and so will remain here
under this leaf.
 
 
VI.

Oh!
How like the sun you are—
tell me everything you know.
 
 
Rachel Abramowitz’s poems and reviews have appeared in Crazyhorse, Oxonian Review, YEW, POOL, jubilat, Colorado Review, and Painted Bride Quarterly. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the University of Oxford, and teaches at Barnard College in New York.