Sugar le Fae
—after Collin Kelley’s “Saving Anne Sexton”
In the library in Florence,
Mass, I found her
shriveled up small, a sibyl
living in the hollow of her own
book: a flask, a handgun,
neatly rolled cash. Everywhere
you looked, her curls!—
in the red cursive script
across the cover,
in the soft corners
of her pages.
Laminated in cellophane,
she rewrites lines again
and again, rearranges
her tiny recliner,
desk and folding chair,
her match-box bed
—such queer furniture
designed for circus mice!
Someone keeps filing
down her incisors
in her sleep. I’ve conspired
to set her free,
but she keeps begging me
to set her on fire.
(“Silvae” (wood/scraps) comprise a poetic form made popular by the Latin poet Publius Papinius Statius (c. 45-96 CE), defined as improvised, occasional poetry written quickly and revised little.)
Sugar le Fae (aka Zach Matteson) is a prize-winning poet, translator, teacher, photographer, songwriter, and Radical Faerie. He has published dozens of poems, essays, and interviews in numerous literary journals in Canada and the U.S., including Plenitude, Lemon Hound, and Eleven Eleven. Sugar has an MFA in Creative Writing from UBC and is currently pursuing a PhD at the Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Social Justice (UBC).
