Always the Outcast

a found poem: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

There is hope in work—in shaping an idea
into something real

and warm. The hard gods look down on me
and my glass nest of an imagination

but I do build poems—
out of rare stars, my depressed spirit, the cold

words drifting
in my brain. Life is painful—it is nothing

more than a menacing curse—
and I am caught between

awful numbness and pretending the earth
might be solid. I feel

helpless, dead, artificial, and apart from other people.
I feel hopeless—unable

to lose myself in anything good.
This work is my only salvation—when I write poems

I feel the promise of the world
enclosed in me.

Nazifa Islam is the author of the poetry collections Searching for a Pulse (Whitepoint Press, 2013) and Forlorn Light: Virginia Woolf Found Poems (Shearsman Books, 2021). Her poems have appeared in Tupelo Quarterly, Gulf Coast, The Missouri Review, The Believer, and Beloit Poetry Journal among other publications. She earned her MFA at Oregon State University. You can find her @nafoopal.