So He Thought by Rachel Abramowitz


Women turn into lakes all the time.

I rely on the old tropes: one hand outstretched,
the other clawed around a spear, the arcane

forest floor silenting each footfall, each
minor note. Sparrows that were women,

these oaks, of course, and would you be surprised
if this deer tick, this sprouting fungus,

had a human song inside it? Now that I am 
this watery shape – bring your face closer.

River yourself beside me, intransitive.  I lied:  you
will know me by the faulty joy of foxgloves, 

whom no one will touch, and who grow everywhere.

Rachel Abramowitz’s poems and reviews have appeared in The Threepenny Review, American Poetry Review, Tin House Online, Seneca Review, The Kenyon Review Online, Crazyhorse, Tupelo Quarterly, and others. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the University of Oxford, and has taught English Literature at Barnard College in New York.