NIGHTJAR REVIEW

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  • Home
  • About
    • Staff
  • Archives
    • Issue 5 >
      • Letter from the Editors
      • Stephanie Bryant Anderson & Andrea Spofford
      • Mary Kovaleski Byrnes
      • Rob Carney
      • William Fargason
      • Raye Hendrix
      • Jude Marr
      • Iliana Rocha
      • Gale Marie Thompson
      • Derek JG Williams
      • Emily Paige Wilson
      • "Why do you love poetry?"
    • Issue 4 >
      • Letter from the Editors
      • Emma Bolden
      • Jess Feldman
      • Maggie Graber
      • Emily Lake Hansen
      • Sonja Johanson
      • Kelsey Ann Kerr
      • Josh Myers
      • Christina Olson
      • Ashley Roach-Freiman
      • Ephraim Scott Sommers
      • Interview with P. Scott Cunningham
    • Issue 3 >
      • Letter from the Editors
      • Anne Champion
      • Jeremy Hawkins
      • Matthew Henriksen
      • Ashley Mares
      • Emmet Martin Penney
      • Liz Robbins
      • Anna Sandy
      • Terell Jamal Terry
      • Dillon J. Welch
      • Jacqui Zeng
      • Interview with Erin Belieu
    • Issue 2 >
      • Letter From the Editors
      • Brandon Amico
      • Ruth Awad
      • Rosebud Ben-Oni
      • Caroline Cabrera
      • Dorothy Chan
      • Adam Crittenden
      • Megan Leonard
      • Paige Lewis
      • Nathan Parker
      • Meghan Privitello
      • Interview with Kaveh Akbar
    • Teaser II >
      • Letter from the Editors
      • Monica Prince
    • Issue 1 >
      • Letter From the Editors
      • Dan Albergotti
      • Adam Clay
      • Heather Derr-Smith
      • Meg Freitag
      • James Kimbrell
      • Madison McCartha
      • David Thacker
      • Julie Marie Wade
      • Maggie Woodward
      • Ashley Roach-Freiman
      • Jessica Plante
    • Teaser I >
      • Letter from the Editors
      • Adam Clay
      • Meg Freitag
      • Sean Shearer
  • Awards
  • Submit
    • 2018 Nightjar Review Poetry Contest
  • Current Issue
    • Letter from the Editors
    • Darren C. Demaree
    • Alan Elyshevitz
    • Jordan Franklin
    • David Dodd Lee
    • Patricia J. Miranda
    • Jessica Poli
    • Molly Bess Rector
    • C.F. Sibley
    • John Sibley Williams

Liz Robbins


Guilt
 
I walk out the front door, past palms
            lifting their fronds in the cold wind,
                        carrying all my tiny, private terrors
 
with me. If terrors are gray horses
            galloping, then I must love them or
                        I won’t keep trying. Hooves hard
 
on my chest: to want is to live.
            The horses never rest, take me to
                        the country I work in, an arid land
 
with powerful men who ride, make
            cells for others to cry in. The cells
                        may have no lock—no door even--
 
but it is too dark to really know.
            At night, I conjure the grief
                        pictures, though they’re halfway
 
imagined. I turn out lights, recall my
            faults, as if staying in shame guards
                        against future losing. If there’s no
 
relief, at least there are palms, waving
            in the wind. Hope in little emblems.
                        How sweetly dark, how artful,
 
the good smudge one makes
            on the earth: we won’t be recalled for our
                        terrors, but how we reached beyond
 
the real and invisible iron bars. I walk
            out the front door, looking to the palms,
                        gold crucifix banging about my heart.

Liz Robbins' third collection, Freaked, won the 2014 Elixir Press Annual Poetry Award; her second collection, Play Button, won the 2010 Cider Press Review Book Award. In 2015, she won the Crab Orchard Review Special Issue Feature Award in Poetry and, in 2016, was nominated for the Pushcart Prize by Fugue. Her poems have appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Denver Quarterly, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Kenyon Review Online, Poetry Daily, Rattle, and Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac. She’s an associate professor of creative writing at Flagler College in St. Augustine, FL.
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