-for Jennifer Martelli
Even the morning word games mourn you.
From the Scramble, elegy, and the Mini-Crossword,
the evergreen you love from Plath:
The yew points up. It has a Gothic shape.
Spooky, perfect for you, who fell asleep
to horror films, earbuds, blue screen.
Who wrote a book of poems for Suspiria,
witchy and weird. Tilda Swinton’s face
a mask. At home, in your torn black dress
from Free People, sleeveless, like the old Italian
women in your poems, you hosted us,
with your post-chemo haircut like Mia Farrow.
Fastidious as the cats you loved: Maria,
Dante, Cosmo, after each meal, you’d load
the dishwasher, wipe the counters clean
before we left each day. There was a bump
over your heart for the port, then the rash
that blistered everywhere but your face,
rosy and relaxed. You said you felt well.
When I saw you last, we ate ice cream with Vin in the car,
out of the wind at Holy Cow, in Salem.
Then the fever, the week in the hospital.
After a year of success, hospice.
The message of the yew tree is blackness—
Subhaga Crystal Bacon is a Queer poet living in rural northcentral Washington on unceded Methow land. Their latest book, Transitory, is the recipient of the Isabella Gardner Award for Poetry, from BOA Editions, and was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award. Subhaga is a teaching artist working in schools and libraries as well as with private students. Their work appears or is forthcoming in a variety of journals including Diode, the Bellevue Literary Review, Indianapolis Review, Rise Up Review, Ghost City Review. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing: Poetry, from the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers.
