i am reading

elizabeth bishop’s unpublished poems*

by Sister Lou Ella Hickman, I.W.B.S.

pages and pages of her stillborns

among  her almosts and imperfect ones

yet    even these startle with their radiant words. . .    

how could she see everything

and

after her mind’s eye took it all in

she wrote it down

often scribbling in her tight-fisted script

dark and painful like her secrets. . .

in the process

the words often quarreled back like a jealous lover. . .

she wrote

then    in her rare and beautiful sometimes

her chiseled music found its voice

*Edgar Allan Poe & The Juke-Box edited and annotated by Alice Quinn, 2006.

* * * * *

Sister Lou Ella is a former teacher and librarian. She is a certified spiritual director as well as a poet and writer. Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines such as America, First Things, Emmanuel, Third Wednesday, and new verse news as well as in four anthologies: The Night’s Magician: Poems about the Moon, edited by Philip Kolin and Sue Brannnan Walker, Down to the Dark River edited by Philip Kolin, Secrets edited by Sue Brannan Walker and After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events edited by Tom Lombardo. She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2017. Her first book of poetry entitled she: robed and wordless was published in 2015 (Press 53).