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Invisible City

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Issue 1 Poetry

In a Time of Want

By Elisabeth Murawski

I’m so sorry. We did
all we could.

Another mother
might cut off all her hair.

I grow mine long
and longer.

When I lean forward,
it cups my face

like a lover’s hands.
I’m in St. Francis’s cave

praying on my knees
in the dark:

tell me what to do.
I am nine again

under the dining room table,
peering out

through a wall of lace
at my father’s

high black shoe.
He never told us

what he did in France,
if he killed anyone.

He had thick wavy hair
like my son’s.

Mine’s poker straight.
Coarse, Mama said,

as a horse’s tail.
The seizure lasted

three to four minutes!
Can you imagine it?

The waters I walk beside
are not still.


Author of Heiress, which received The Poetry Society of Virginia Book Award 2018,
Zorba’s Daughter, which won the May Swenson Poetry Award, Moon and Mercury,
and three chapbooks. Still Life with Timex won the Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prize
and will be published in spring, 2021. Recent publications include The Yale Review,
The Hudson Review, and The Greensboro Review. A native of Chicago, she currently lives in Alexandria, VA.

Featured image: Resist fear assist love by Risssss

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Literary Journal of the MFA in Writing Program at the University of San Francisco

Note: The contents of Invisibe City do not necessarily reflect the views of USF or of the MFA program.

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