about the author
heather hughes hangs her heart in Somerville and Miami. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in The Adroit Journal, Denver Quarterly, Gulf Coast, Queen Mob’s Teahouse, Vinyl Poetry, and other journals. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and a 2016 TAR Chapbook Series finalist. heather is also a writer for Mass Poetry online and a letterpress printer. She MFA-ed at Lesley University and ALM-ed at Harvard University Extension School. All her tattoos have wings. Find her online at birdmaddgirl.com.
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Pith
heather hughes
Alternative content
Your body is the cemetery I cut through three or four days a week. I often pass the cockatiel man, and once the treestump man with his money that needed counting right then and there, right away. Why am I doing this to my body, my garbage-crown body? I would rather run in the dark, but I am clumsy, and the Victorian mania for tidying headstones keeps no one safe. Yes, I have shielded my grave-peach from an older man using the spunk of a younger man. Yes, even after I flew to the most remote of human islands, there it was, the theatrically feathered leer to ward off. Another vehement separation of headstone and body.