Syllabus

By Rachel Trousdale

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Goldenrod, brambles. The yellow and black
spider zipping shut its web. We pass:
birches, maples, oaks. What have we taught
our son this sunny summer? Not to mind
the narrow bloody trace left on your shin
that wins you the blackberry. The French word
for orange, which is orange. Monarchs eat
only milkweed, and are named for kings.
Sometimes the king is bad, or mad, a word
which can mean angry, or that something’s wrong 
in someone’s mind. Your mother likes to see
you kiss your sister, and your mother scares
you sometimes, when you won’t get into bed.
Pokeweed, tansy, Chinese lantern flower,
the poisonous profusion of the hill.
Pick it, don’t touch it, this one, yes, no, yes.
The great book of injunctions: we can start
to pick out, word by word, instructions for
our lives, which, as we live, we learn to read.
That purple flower like a magic wand?
I’m sorry—no, I’ve never learned its name.

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Rachel Trousdale is a professor of English at Framingham State University. Her poems have appeared in The Yale Review, The Nation, Diagram, and a chapbook, Antiphonal Fugue for Marx Brothers, Elephant, and Slide Trombone. Her book Five-Paragraph Essay on the Body-Mind Problem won Wesleyan University Press's Cardinal Poetry Prize and will be published in 2025. See racheltrousdale.com and @rvtrousdale.

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• 11/7 / Meet the Artist with visiting poet-in-residence Vandana Khanna / 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

• 11/7 / Poetry Reading with visiting poet-in-residence Vandana Khanna + local writer Nicole Callihan / The Library at The Betsy-South Beach, Miami Beach, FL / Live and Live-Streamed on Instagram Live/Facebook Live at @swwimmiami / 7:00 pm EST / Free

• Two workshops remain in our Workshop Series--SWWIM Lessons: From Prompt to Placement: “Navigating Your Manuscript with Alexandra Lytton Regalado – What I learned from reading for (and winning) the National Poetry Series” on 11/12 (register here) and “Surfing Submittable with Jen Karetnick – Keeping your head above water in the poetry submissions process” on 12/10 (register here). Price: $80/workshop. Time: 7:00–9:00 PM (EST). Where: Zoom.

• Note: SWWIM Every Day is now accepting poetry translations for publication consideration. Please see swwim.org/submit for the full guidelines.

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