SHANNON WOLF

The Curse of Narcissus

Instead of a mere boy
falling in love with his own skin
—like dropped petals reflecting
back at him from a shallow pool
—and drowning

It is me frantically shaking
my freshly dyed head in the drop down mirror
of my car, rubbing at a painted on freckle
and crashing headlong into the median.

Even when I abhor my face
—its pores
And peaked structures—
it is a wonder to me that I have kept it
all this time. I do not mean
to destroy myself. Not one of us does. 

We are all writing about the moon actually

Even when we are supposedly writing about crushes
and being crushed; indolent fathers and indulgent mothers;

there is always a push and pull. Sometimes it is violent
like the red rope of love that holds a baby to the womb.

Sometimes somber and slow like the tug of a handkerchief
from a pocket at a wake. But there is always this ebb and flow.

This pull from you, this push to me, it reminds me
of the moon’s aching symphony. No, it doesn’t remind me.

It’s just there in everything we are writing. How can I leave you now?
When you are always drawing me back. My feet in your shores,

my weak hands reaching out to the depths of your sweet brass heart.

In the children’s books I treasured, all the parents are unimportant

I want to write a poem for you
about the books you stole from me.
Yes, you. The boxes of them
are somewhere in your dingy workshop,
behind your father’s old camry
and the tshirts you never threw out
because they are all in the array of sizes
that led you to the size you are now
and you can’t let go of the man
who once ran marathons on Sunday mornings.
I want to write down the plots
of the books I can’t remember the names of,
as if that would somehow preserve them.
Actually, I suppose I want to write a poem
for me. As usual, you’re much less
essential to the story than I first thought.
I cannot remember most of the names but
I do remember the Island of Adventure
and the worn cover in my hands, eggshelling.
The woman you were married to first said:
I was told it was valuable, and handed it to me.
Now, I mark it as stolen and wonder how to go on.
In the book, the four children are parentless
and make a new home on a strange island
filled with birds. They do not know the word return.

Shannon Wolf is a British-American writer, living in New York, where she teaches for SUNY Schenectady and Bard College’s Prison Initiative. Her debut poetry collection Green Card Girl was released in 2023. Her work has appeared in Bending Genres and The Forge, among others. You can find her on social media @helloshanwolf.