Hi everyone, and Happy Thursday! We hope you liked last Thursday’s post featuring “Gravel Roads” by Claire Kramer. If you haven’t read it yet, take a look here! Continuing on the trend of “throwbacks,” today we bring more great poetry from a past issue of the Laughing Medusa to brighten your winter day.

If you’re playing catch-up, as part of the celebration for our new online home this year,
we’ve started featuring a selection of some of our favorite pieces from previous print
issues of our magazine. Each piece has been selected by a member of our Editorial
Council, who’ve been kind enough to tell us why they love it (and why they hope you
will, too). If this week’s choice or any others leave you wanting more—and we hope they
do—be sure to check out the full version of our latest issue, now available online under
that “Our Current Issue” tab you’ll find above.

This week, the poem featured was chosen by the amazing Margherita. Here is what she has to say about it:

“sit. listen to me.” is visually striking because of its scattered spacing and line breaks, which induce pauses in the reading that allow the audience to fully appreciate every word. The language is beautiful and evokes a smoky kind of melancholy that readers take to heart, because everyone can relate to the struggle of understanding human emotions!

Read on for the full poem:

sit. listen to me.

     it is not so strange:       not to know
how you feel.

       now:        put the wrong end
of a cigarette      to your lips.

         it will taste not       at all white
but black,   like       ash,

which you will scatter         like    pigeons
at the        flick       of your wrist,

the embers,     dropped       coins that
coast    on their sides

    in arcs        you will    chase
but never predict

       you will swallow        this air
and       choke     on your spit

and decide:
it is not so strange:       not to know
and yet still try
to call    this        your own.