Poem of the Week

Lucia Perillo has published five books of poetry, including Luck Is Luck, winner of the Kingsley Tufts Award. Her memoir I’ve Heard the Vultures Singing: Field Notes on Poetry, Illness, and Nature was published in 2007. Her new book of poems is Inseminating the Elephant (Copper Canyon Press, 2009). Perillo has taught at Syracuse University, Saint Martin’s University, and Southern Illinois University. She lives in Olympia, Washington.


2010 PULITZER
PRIZE FINALIST

First Epistle of Lucia to Her Old Boyfriends

by Lucia Perillo

Not infrequently I find myself wondering which of you

are dead

now that it’s been so long since I have had a boyfriend
for whom this wonder would be a somewhat milder

version of

the way our actual parting went—i.e., with me not wondering
but outright wishing that an outright lightning bolt
would sail sharply into your thick heads.


Can I plead youth now over malign intent?
And does my moral fiber matter anyhow
since I have not gone forth and et cetera’d—
i.e., doesn’t my absent children’s nondepletion of the ozone layer
give me some atmospheric exchange credits under the

Kyoto Protocol

to release the fluorocarbons of these unkind thoughts?
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