Melissa Ginsburg

DROUGHT

For drowning, drought.

For distance, silt

In streams after rain

Travels. Measurement

Is a winglength

By which to calm

Your drowning down,

A wall to hang

Desire on. For thirst

A loose nectar

Vial. Eat your fill,

Dial your drowning

In. As wind blows

Silt in drought. As

A dowser stills. A well

Unfills and shines

The bodies out.

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PRAYER

This time next year
What will I
Be reading what will I

Think will I
Speak
Finally as a bruise

From the black garden
As the eye in the center
Of tenderness

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Melissa Ginsburg is the author of the poetry collection Dear Weather Ghost, published in 2013 by Four Way Books, and two poetry chapbooks: Arbor (New Michigan Press) and Double Blind (Dancing Girl Press). Her noir novel, Sunset City, was released in 2016 from Ecco Books. Her poems have appeared in Fence, Denver Quarterly, Field, Pleiades, The Iowa Review, Blackbird, and other magazines. She has received support from the Mississippi Arts Council and the Ucross Foundation. Originally from Houston, Texas, Ginsburg attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She is an assistant professor of creative writing and literature at the University of Mississippi in Oxford.