Love Letter to Anne Sexton #17
We must stay silent, bear the hush as one bears a weary day, a fragmented line, an empty stomach.
She-wolves focused on staying hungry, hissing syllables in the depths of the wood, braving the darkness on sturdy paws for the flesh of a poem.
Love Letter to Anne Sexton #37
Your heart hangs from a hook blue as an old bruise that has been festering.
I play with my scars, sharp pangs of flesh, weaving their blood songs, their butchered feelings.
Our love is a slaughterhouse.
Alessandra Bava is a poet and a translator living in the Eternal city. She is the editor of HerKind, a poetry series dedicated to contemporary women’s poetry for the Italian publisher Ensemble. Three of her chapbooks have been published in the States. Her poems and translations have appeared in Gargoyle, Plath Profiles, Thrush, Tinderbox and Waxwing, among others. Her most recent translation works are: Anthology of Contemporary British Women Poets and Diane Seuss’ four-legged girl.