Pink verses

I feel the marrow
of a home street

A place of love

There is steam against the window of my sister’s room
Where you were once a very gentle animal

How many times have we lost contact
through the gadget of the past?

I saw your parents at the craft market
Your father was pale

We had a terrible love affair meant for children

and I feel like a little duck
I think of you all day

March

Nipples caked like dirt
beneath the pink top I borrowed from my
dead aunt

Eating
blueberries
in the window
of a screen door
she had also left behind

It would be unfair to touch you so I don’t want to

puffed up completely

I didn’t know detritus was pronounced like
that
if so i wouldn’t have wrote it

grace (ge) gilbert (they/them) is a poet, writer and collage artist. they received their MFA in poetry from the University of Pittsburgh in 2022, where they now teach. they are the author of Holly (YesYes Books, 2026), a hybrid image and text book about the 1976 murder of their paternal grandmother, as well as three chapbooks: the closeted diaries: essays (Porkbelly Press, 2022), NOTIFICATIONS IN THE DARK (Antenna Books, 2023) and today is an unholy suite (Barrelhouse, 2024). their work can be found in 2023's Best of the Net Anthology, the Indiana Review, Ninth Letter, Adroit and elsewhere. They teach hybrid collage and poetics courses at Brooklyn Poets, Minnesota Center for Book Arts, and other institutions.