Day 11: Poet 11: Jenny Molberg

Photo by Rebecca Bogart

Epistle from the Hospital for Harassment

As in a house of mourning / cover the mirrors / Save yourself from
yourself / Open the windows / Feed your history to night / Do not
wrestle / against your story / let it keep happening / then kill it— /
the editor who invited you for coffee / a manila folder of poems /
meticulously typed / and tucked beneath your arm / all those beats
and breaks / silenced / as he thrust his hand on your hip, saying
Sweetheart, try your hair in a bun / and What about glasses / If you wore
glasses men wouldn’t notice you so much / Or your colleague who poked /
a bruise on your thigh / guessing at its origins / Or the man who
made the bruise / Honey, you’re not as stupid as you look— / Cast it out /
until the night is so full of the feathers of your thoughts / it grows
the giant wings of a crow / takes off— / Now lie before the
curtained mirrors / Forget what you look like / For better is a
wandering eye / than the two you clench shut / waiting for him to
finish


Previously published in The Journal.


Jenny Molberg is the author of Marvels of the Invisible (winner of the 2014 Berkshire Prize, Tupelo Press, 2017) and Refusal (forthcoming, LSU Press). She teaches creative writing at the University of Central Missouri, where she directs Pleiades Press and edits Pleiades magazine. Find her online at jennymolberg.com.