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Volume 2, Issue 2

June 1, 2011


Misread
Elizabeth Kate Switaj

empathy? I've studied it
lines on your hands say
what you've carried    I guess
you'll want again

            so I dig it up from roots & rocks & rot
is never just dirt
                          I leave
bones you'd name
plates you shatter
                              -ed -ing
          'll 've 're

   of course when your hands take
what you need, they won't crawl my arms
waking nerves & hairs to sign-al love, in love

so I try to read the creases in your face





Since completing her MFA in 2004, Elizabeth Kate Switaj has published Magdalene & the Mermaids (Paper Kite Press), Shanghai (Gold Wake Press), and The Broken Sanctuary: Nature Poems (Ypolita Press). She is an Editorial Assistant for Irish Pages and a doctoral candidate at Queen's University Belfast. For more information visit www.elizabethkateswitaj.net