Eliza Griswold Poems

I woke to a voice within the room. perhaps.
The room itself: "You're wasting this life
expecting disappointment."
I packed my bag in the night
...

I'm through! I'm through!
she says and resays.
The years pass.
Her feathers gray.
...

You have a beautiful mouth,
Luigi, the man-boy says.

The rubber raft
...

The pack is filing
from my nowheresvilles
filling the halfway hotels,
...

The naked man in the caravan
has peace of mind. He whose covering
belongs to others is uncovered.
...

We meet midway to walk white cobbles
under a fish-flesh gray sky.
Europe is collapsing; we are collapsing
...

A spring day oozes through Trastevere.
A nun in turquoise sneakers contemplates the stairs.
Ragazzi everywhere, the pus in their pimples
pushing up like paperwhites in the midday sun.
...

When you said no,
I went for your dresser,
opened the top drawer,
broke the paper seals
...

Do I still long for my virginity?
— Fragment 107
I never longed for my virginity.
I heard it on the radio after the hurricane.
...

My transgressions pile against the garden wall
(built when Rome began to weaken, scarred

by a cannonball.) I gossiped; I snubbed
a dinner guest. I watch until the wall writhes
...