Shade Rhapsody

Shelter in this. Shave off its edges.
A shine bounces off the ruined floor.

Sugar the windowsills to lure in strangers.
Swallow shade to shush the light.

Surely someone once lived here.
Sheen of presence lives here now.

Shake the skin from your shadow.
Shame certainty. Shame the shade
that offers its noun to you.

Loosening Rhapsody

The tether unties. Air huffs and
hushes through the gap like

a scarf blown through
an open window. Untied.

Who is startled to be free? This
thought moving backward in freedom

to be unthought. This loosening
that resumes a prior presence.

Final Rhapsody

—until another. All understanding
is penultimate. Urge and answer
undulate together. Answer and impulse
are the undergarment

that drops finally to the floor.
Limbs naked at last. Unless
another layer unsays them,
undoes them. Under the bare

at last more bare, amending
the ultimate.

Elizabeth Robinson is the author, most recently, of Vulnerability Index from Northwestern University Press, a Forward Indies poetry book of the year finalist and a Big Other Prize finalist. Being Modernist Together, a new collection, is coming out from Solid Objects later in 2026. Robinson’s work has been anthologized in the 2023 Pushcart Prize Annual and the 2025 Best American Poetry.