Mired

I submitted these poems as part of the final collection for my first poetry workshop class last quarter. Riley O. reviewed my work and their feedback was so generous and kind on an area of writing I was quite unfamiliar with. Initially, I was nervous to first share these poems but Riley made the process simple by offering genuine, reader-based marginal comments on each draft. As a result, some of my poems took new directions even I wasn’t expecting.

I am both thief and painting captured
parallel to all these faces, still
waiting on glossy, wandering eyes.

Devour me as I devoured you, some
body of work said it was to strip me
—mounted or however I was

caught, head proudly hanging—
my plaque read Please Don’t Touch.
Marooned, form of liquored veins

and pools of oil, I am mismatched
to frame, stuck with stolen other.
My lust in every emptiness,

single glance bleed me out to
harsher lines and dull appeal.
Whose craft creates me real?

Bare me now in all my fragments
to age in every color and muck.

Elly Boes is a peer tutor and fellow at DePaul’s writing center as well as a student journalist working as Senior Associate Editor for 14 East magazine. In their free time, Boes enjoys writing poetry, swimming in Lake Michigan and playing with their two cats, Stevie and Jodie.