/shannon hardwick

God’s A Woman Eating A Raspberry Cupcake Like The Painting My Abuser Burned

I am a forest who wants / to follow the wind as if it is / the first woman I loved who was also / a man & maybe every woman I’ve loved has / been in secret / secret / part of myself in a dress / somewhere near the sea we drink / because we can & she likes / the tops of tress / as much as she likes the wind & / my lips she says / remind her of the first / man she loved who picked / raspberries / wild / running together like / fruit in Sevilla in the heat & / I liked the goat’s milk & / I want to be with her when she looks / for birds like one looks / for their God-picking stones & / I wish I didn’t / waste half my life.

What An Odd Thing To Assume

That this is a sermon about motherhood how to be a good woman

you must bleed your body a pretty garden split between two subway trains.

There you will meet a wolf named Diane missing most of her teeth but able

to make an ash-blonde baby disappear. You are not a good mother.

Diane is not a good mother. One of you is just a reluctant Cronus,

the other willing to take the half-made from the other’s dumb mouth.

Shannon Elizabeth Hardwick‘s work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Gulf Coast Journal, Salamander Magazine, The Texas Observer, The Missouri Review, Four Way Review, Harpur Palate, Passages North, among others. Hardwick serves as the poetry editor for The Boiler Journal.