The truth of her is not
perennial. The orderlies 
maintain her with tools 
and un-love. There is no need.

The trees care for none 
of this, bending toward light.
And the nursing birds, tending 
their stories, sink toward sun. 

Everything’s gone from me, now
The bed-sheets scroll sickness
And the holy roses need 
something new to keep. 

---

Tara Propper has earned her MFA in poetry and PhD in English. As a poet and scholar, she is interested in the poetic dimension of inhabitation and embodiment, particularly the ways in which physical spaces erupt, interrupt, and disrupt private interiority and vice versa. Her poetry has appeared in the Southampton Review, Long Island Sounds, Literature Today, and is forthcoming in Moveable Type and P – Queue. Her chapbook, Lessons in Nomadism, is under contract with dancing girl press. Her scholarly work has been published in Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy, Feminist Rhetorical Connections: From the Suffragists to the Cyberfeminists, and Composition Forum. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Instruction in the Department of Literature and Languages at the University of Texas at Tyler.

Twitter: @tara198400
Email:Tpropper@uttyler.edu