IT WAS A FINE/EMPTY HOUSE

with lines from Sylvia Plath’s journals

(a) drawing
     a table

            shallow
     books

a dish of blueberries bathed
            (in a) hazy weariness

  Tonight was awful
beautiful

                         so romantic
            a sudden slant

  (from) the streetlight
Maybe I crave

            laughter
            on such a night

  myself a fool
                                    Tonight

I copied some
            sketch on a

                        white handkerchief
remember(ing) what it said

I am content
happy

             at the next dawn there are
  strawberr(ies)

call me   write me
I don’t want to die

all pretty
                        and forever

a glass of cool
             goodbye

Poet and photographer, Ronda Piszk Broatch is the author of Lake of Fallen Constellations, (MoonPath Press, 2015), Shedding Our Skins, (Finishing Line Press 2008), and Some Other Eden, (Finishing Line Press, 2005). Ronda was a finalist for the 2019 Four Way Books Prize, and the 2020 Charles B. Wheeler Poetry Prize. Her journal publications include Blackbird, Prairie Schooner, Sycamore Review, Missouri Review, Meridian, Poetry Daily, and Public Radio KUOW’s All Things Considered, among others.