This isn’t Working

Fully dressed again. On the desk, a lamp
with a chain; it’s light, and then midnight,

this life. I don’t come from anyone known
to pull this off, living.

Leave it at that, me at here. In black
ensembles on streets. In offices, in polyester

cardigans to outfit against this violence,
this air again. In rayon skirts, in dark fuck me

heels no human should stand for, I am no one
needed, nothing to see here. I return to dying

mildly in sixty degree months, the week,
a season that’s stark, unshaded ahead.




Elizabeth Weaver earned an M.F.A. in poetry from Columbia, and her work has appeared in a number of journals, including Sweet: A Literary Confection, Tattoo Highway, and the Paris Review. She has taught at several colleges and universities in the New York City area and lives in Brooklyn, where she currently works as a freelance writer.