{"id":9228,"date":"2025-11-21T15:57:30","date_gmt":"2025-11-21T15:57:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/?post_type=article&#038;p=9228"},"modified":"2025-11-21T17:31:12","modified_gmt":"2025-11-21T17:31:12","slug":"two-poems-19","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/two-poems-19\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Poems"},"content":{"rendered":"<h4><span style=\"font-size: 14pt\"><strong>137: An Elegy<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I was at their mercy when<br \/>\nI let them pull you away.<br \/>\nPeople say life or death,<br \/>\nbut they do not often mean<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>what it meant that starless night.<br \/>\nIt was Thanksgiving, and there<br \/>\nwas so much blood I could not see<br \/>\nballooning quietly inside.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>You likely didn\u2019t feel anything \u2013<br \/>\nI felt it all for you. You likely<br \/>\ndid not know what kind of an end<br \/>\nyou were coming to. I did<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>the knowing for both of us.<br \/>\nIt should have been like this<br \/>\nforever, at least until you grew:<br \/>\nI\u2019d do these sufferings for you.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>There are so many things that do<br \/>\nnot exist since that night. Not<br \/>\njust you, but <em>brother<\/em>, and that part<br \/>\nof my womb I\u2019d walked through<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>my whole life with, torn<br \/>\nlike a murmur in the middle<br \/>\nof the night. When they stopped<br \/>\nthat barely heart of yours<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>to save my life, I think I tried<br \/>\nto do that for you, too \u2013<br \/>\nsomething about my own heart,<br \/>\nyou see, doesn\u2019t beat now either.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I can\u2019t seem to find a way<br \/>\nto count its cadence, to count<br \/>\nanything moving inside<br \/>\nthat shows that I\u2019m alive,<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>the way I was alive before<br \/>\nthey brought the scalpel and<br \/>\nthe image from the monitor:<br \/>\nthe last counted minute of your heart.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h4><span style=\"font-size: 14pt\"><strong>Ode to Missing Something You Never Had<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<pre>Because what is a ghost\r\nif you never knew<\/pre>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">its face,<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 80px\">its form?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>A woman passing through<br \/>\nstopped me on the side-<br \/>\nwalk to ask, <em>What is that tree<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\"><em>with no branches or leaves?\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>She\u2019ll never know<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">what it is, its wild glory<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 80px\">of blossoms.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>But not knowing doesn\u2019t mean<br \/>\nit won\u2019t cling to you<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">in the dusk, follow<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>you down<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u00a0 the hallway in the middle<\/p>\n<p>of the night, let you see it hiding<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>in the branch of a frangipani,<br \/>\nin the bend of an isolated road,<br \/>\nin the bureau drawer, crouched,<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>eyes aglow. How I hold this pain,<br \/>\nmanifest it into form until I feel<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">again the knife\u2019s dive into<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 my insides<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>just to know the cleft is still there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>137: An Elegy &nbsp; I was at their mercy when I let them pull you away. People say life or death, but they do not often mean &nbsp; what it meant that starless night. It was Thanksgiving, and there was so much blood I could not see ballooning quietly inside. &nbsp; You likely didn\u2019t feel [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":9230,"template":"","categories":[9,49,119],"tags":[889,2025,2024,2026],"class_list":["post-9228","article","type-article","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aquifer","category-literary-features","category-poetry","tag-aquifer","tag-aquifer-poetry","tag-emily-schulten","tag-two-poems"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Two Poems - The Florida Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/two-poems-19\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Two Poems - The Florida Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"137: An Elegy &nbsp; I was at their mercy when I let them pull you away. 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