Eleanor Stanford

HOW I THOUGHT ABOUT MY BODY

Driving north through rain, I watched the Schuylkill
outgrow its banks. I’d packed three dildos, 
an eighth of weed, a Danish novel:
the coffin that is childhood, the shadows

of old longing at the end. And in between,
streetlights and moon, loneliness, methadone,
a stolen jar of marmalade. I mean,
I thought about the edges: backbone,  

burning nerves, closed borders. I wanted
to escape, but also be contained. We
built a fire, drank some wine. The blunted 
smolder of damp wood, a stark tableau of trees. 

We talked about the history of glass.
Outside, the forest, fog, and meadow grass.

ELEANOR STANFORD is the author of three books of poetry, most recently The Imaginal Marriage (Carnegie Mellon University Press). She has been a Peace Corps volunteer in the Cape Verde Islands and a Fulbright fellow to Brazil. She lives in the Philadelphia area.