All the Flowers Are for Me

By Julia Thacker

By the fistful, licorice-black, Georgia clay-red,
cheddar-yellow pills pressed into my palm.
A doctor wrote the scrip. Remedy for doughy arms,
belly, thighs. Shiva swallowing forest fires.
Wide awake for three consecutive sunrises, scribbling
in a spiral notebook indecipherable inky knots.   
Even the teenage poems perspire through their clothes.
I eat only flavored lip gloss. This is before
college and weed, before speed freak.
Before White Cross composed a term paper
overnight. Teetering on platform shoes,
dazed, doll-size, I spread my bramble of hair
across the ironing board, press one hank at a time,
iron hissing, singed, smelling faintly of smoke,
chrysanthemums at my feet.

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Julia Thacker's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Bennington Review, Gulf Coast Online, The Massachusetts Review, The New Republic, and others. A portfolio of her work is included in the 25th anniversary issue of Poetry International. Twice a fellow of the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, she has also received fellowships from the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe and the National Endowment for the Arts. She lives in Arlington, Massachusetts.

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• 11/8 / Meet the Artist with visiting poet-in-residence Ruby Hansen Murray / The Library at The Betsy-South Beach, Miami Beach, FL / Live and Live-Streamed on Instagram Live/Facebook Live at @swwimmiami / 6:00 pm EST / Free

• 11/8 / Poetry Reading with visiting poet-in-residence Ruby Hansen Murray and local poet Judy Ireland / The Library at The Betsy-South Beach, Miami Beach, FL / Live and Live-Streamed on Instagram Live/Facebook Live at @swwimmiami / 7:30 pm EST / Free

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