SPORK PRESS
sporklet 15
Paula Cisewski
Per Aspera Ad Astra

I want to remember how it was
stationed outside at 2am, 3am, 
the Perseids streaking across
the ink-wet forever of my quarantine.

 

Looking as up as possible,
it seemed that the whole world
was me and this meteor shower
and this night orchestra of insects 

 

single-minded in their desire for one
another. Just one wishable star falling
after another, and my left hand lighter, I guess, 

ringless. I hadn’t thought to notice until now. 
To Someone I Secretly Love

In a springtime so much was growing
even as it didn’t know it was dying.

 

I love your face.
I love your face so much.

 

Even the hate-filled ones, someone’s love can 
deliver us from the hate-filled ones, momma momma, we 

 

must deliver ourselves. Are you saying that or am I

saying that? Or is what’s received eternally on repeat?

Paula Cisewski’s fourth poetry collection, Quitter, won the Diode Editions Book Prize. She is also the author of The Threatened Everything, Ghost Fargo (Nightboat Poetry Prize winner, selected by Franz Wright), Upon Arrival, and several chapbooks, including the lyric prose Misplaced Sinister. She lives in Minneapolis, where she teaches writing privately and academically and collaborates with fellow artists and activists.