This selection, chosen by guest editor Joey Gould, is from Rupture by Adrie Rose (Gold Line Press 2023).
The Knife, Sharpened
I sold
the diamond ring, swept
the corners of the rooms, slept
with a pine branch
beside me.
How long
it has taken to find every stray
clipping to throw into the fire.
The wolf in the bed
said, You owe me,
you opened
your door.
How long
does it take, yarrow
on the doorstep,
wedding dress
given away,
a pint of blood
taken, all bribes
returned
all debts paid.
Adrie Rose is a poet and editor. Her work recently appeared at Poets.org, The Baltimore Review, Nimrod, the Ploughshares blog & more. Her poem “flare” won the 2022 Anne Bradstreet Prize with the Academy of American Poets, and she won the the Eleanor Cederstrom Prize, and the Mary Augusta Jordan Prize in 2022. Her poem “The Anthropocene” was nominated for a 2020 Pushcart Prize and she won the Elizabeth Babcock Poetry Prize, the Ethel Olin Corbin Prize, and the Gertrude Posner Spencer Prize in 2021. She has work forthcoming in anthologies with Porkbelly Press and Anhinga Press. She studied creative writing at Smith College, Bennington College and the SC Governor’s School for the Arts & Humanities. She is currently writing a novel and finalizing a poetry manuscript.
Joey Gould, who served as Sundress Academy for the Arts Spring 2024 Writer in Residence, wrote The Acute Avian Heart (2019, Lily Poetry Review) & Penitent > Arbiter (2022, Lily Poetry Review), along with transfinity (forthcoming from Lambhouse Books). Their recent work appears in Solstice, Memezine, and Defunkt Magazine’s Surreal Confessional Anthology. They write book reviews as Poetry Editor for Drunk Monkeys, and have also placed reviews in Glass: A Journal of Poetry and the Sundress blog.
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