Sarah Stickney: Be Ready to Leave
Joshua Newton
How To Let Athens Burn
Be ready to leave. Teach
the self to ford the stream
and not look down. Down
fell Eurydice. Down fell
Persephone. Down fell Dido
in flames. I say flaneuse
you say lazy. You say placate,
I say crazy. It will take
a refiner's fire. At times,
too unsteady even
for coffee, you must place
the self in a sheath. Release
when desperate. Be ready
to breathe the night
completely. Be as dead
as the star –
as shining. Your future.
The vault above as blue
as any flame. Is it guilt
or release you feel just before
sleep? A lever. A meeting
with morning like
an empty beach.
Sarah Stickney is a former Fulbright Grantee for the translation of Italian poetry. Her co-translations of Elisa Biagini's selected poems, The Guest in the Wood, won the Best Translated Book Award for poetry in 2014. Her own poems have appeared in journals such as Rhino, The Portland Review, Mudlark, Bateau, B O D Y, and others. Her manuscript "Portico" was selected by Thomas Lux as the 2016 winner of Emrys Press's annual chapbook competition. She holds an MFA in poetry from the University of New Hampshire, and lives in Baltimore.
