| WFR POETRY |
| WFR POETRY |
Dear Orpheus
by C. Francis Fisher
I had many strange fears:
quiet libraries, winter
oyster eating. The body I wore
which sometimes, despite
its capacities, seemed like
nothing at all. Any moment
in February. I was a woman,
not an instrument, but you
always said my laugh sounded
like cold water. So what I went
walking in a field all alone?
I was shaking off my fear
of eternity. And yes, there
was a snake. Yes, I had an ankle.
But I was thankful for the moment
I found myself truly alone,
completely my own, in the earth
who swiftly took hold. When you
came, you were only an interruption.
C. Francis Fisher is a poet and translator based in Brooklyn. Her writings have appeared or are forthcoming in Copper Nickel, the Arkansas International, and The Los Angeles Review of Books among others. Her poem, “Self-Portrait at 25,” was selected as the winner for the 2021 Academy of American Poets Prize for Columbia University. Her first book of translations, In the Glittering Maw: Selected Poems of Joyce Mansour, is forthcoming with World Poetry Books in 2024. She teaches undergraduate composition at Columbia University.