Girl in a Library
A nifty poem by Gail Mazur appears on PoetryFoundation.org.
EXCERPT
I want to find my way back to her,
to help her, to grab her hand, pull her
up from the wooden floor of the stacks
where she’s reading accounts of the hatchet
murders of Lizzie Borden’s harsh parents
as if she could learn something about
life if she knew all the cuts and slashes;her essay on Wordsworth or Keats
only a knot in her belly, a faint pressure
at her temples. She’s pale, it’s five years
before the first migraine, but the dreamy
flush has already drained from her face.
Gail Mazur, “Girl in a Library†from Zeppo’s First Wife: New & Selected Poems (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2005).