Poem of the Week | January 09, 2023

This week’s Poem of the Week is “Lucie” by JSA Lowe.

JSA Lowe’s first book of poetry, Internet Girls, will be published in June 2023 by Finishing Line Press. Her poems and essays have recently appeared in Biscuit Hill, Denver Quarterly, Hampden-Sidney Poetry Review, Laurel Review, Michigan Quarterly Review’s Mixtape, Missouri Review, Rupture, Screen Door Review, Sinister Wisdom, Southeast Review, and Superstition Review. Previously, her chapbook Cherry-emily was printed by Dancing Girl Press (2015), and her chapbook DOE by Particle Series Books (2012). She is a lecturer in English at the University of Houston–Clear Lake; she lives on Galveston Island.

Author’s Note

It has now been over four years since Lucie died and I’m not sure I have grown to miss her presence on our planet any less. I can see her in maroon velvet as she was the day I met her; I can read her spidery handwriting on a postcard, I can hear her quiet voice. None of this was her. And I do feel that I have failed her tuition, what little of it I was fortunate enough to have. Her lubricious velours, as she said of Dickinson; her white soprano injuries. Finally in frustration I enclosed my inabilities inside this little square, this shoebox diorama. She herself would have found lines for it: long and tender, short stitches. She would never commit this ink-wasting toy.