The Stubbornly Persistent Delusions Of
by Sophie Weiner
Runestone, volume 2
The Stubbornly Persistent Delusions Of
Deplorable, Dolores for days
not understanding the facts
of behavior— she has a certain
disposition for a certain kind of lack.
Compensatory, she erects forests that bear
no leaves. The ground is stretched & dry. It beats
hard in the eardrum— It’s like thunder to walk
on— Nothing will root, will take
to it. Each body she makes looks cut
from brittle sandpaper, worn & un-
ambiguously shaped without candor—
pulpwood spine if a spine at all— It’s true,
she’s never had one, not in the real way, nor
her gossamer / the spider-spun—
Beginning to feel gratuitous, she reaches
a hand behind her, suspecting, mortified,
bending now the way time does, or is said to
in most History Books—
SOPHIE WEINER
Towson University
Sophie Weiner is from Baltimore, Maryland. She is a graduating senior at Towson University, where she studies English. She has worked on university’s literary magazine, Grub Street, as part of the poetry staff, and is currently working on a creative thesis under poet and professor, Leslie Harrison. In the fall of 2016, she will be a first-year poet in the University of Kentucky’s MFA program.