Hannah Bonner
Obituaries
Linda Kasbian said she and the women
did anything and everything for Charlie
without refusal.
They bit their wrists
only occasionally
to remember
they were alive.
Karen Carpenter sang
angels, dust, moonlight,
you – tremulous in the auditorium.
Simone Weil sucked
the pus of lepers
to come
closer to God.
Everything I’ve archived exists
in the silver exhaustion of endings.
The teeth so white in the photograph,
like pearls, plucked
from a silk lined leatherette,
at the margins of language.
Hannah Bonner's poems have appeared, or are forthcoming, in Asheville Poetry Review, Pigeon Pages, Rattle, Schlag, So to Speak, The LaHave Review, The North Carolina Literary Review, The Pinch Journal, The Vassar Review, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, TriQuarterly, and Two Peach. Her essays have been featured in Bright Wall/Dark Room, Bustle, Essay Daily, The Rumpus, The Little Patuxent Review, and VIDA. She is a creative nonfiction MFA candidate at The University of Iowa.
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