Stevie Edwards

cantfindit

Stevie Edwards holds a PhD in creative writing from University of North Texas and an MFA in poetry from Cornell University. Stevie’s poems have appeared in Poetry Magazine, American Poetry Review, TriQuarterly, and elsewhere. She is a Lecturer at Clemson University and author of Sadness Workshop (Button Poetry, 2018), Humanly (Small Doggies Press, 2015), and Good Grief (Write Bloody Publishing, 2012). Edwards is currently Poetry Editor of The South Carolina Review and her third full-length collection of poetry, Quiet Armor, is forthcoming from Northwestern University Press’s Curbstone imprint. Originally a Michigander, she now lives in South Carolina with her husband and a small herd of rescue pitbulls (Daisy, Tinkerbell, and Peaches). Stevie uses she/they pronouns.

Offering

This is what I have to give you. Leftovers

that aren’t vegan, not even food really—

burnt leather scraps for a heart, but my God,

I’ve been saving them for you.

I’ll leave what I have at your feet

like a proud cat littering mice across the stoop.

So this is love. So this is entropy. I’ll break

every bone in my feet running toward

the shiny gate of it.

The whole damn sky holds its breath.

Let me be holy and warm.

Let me be the exhale. The best wine.

The wish on every eyelash.

Published:

2015

Length:

Shorty

Literary Movements:

Contemporary

Anthology Years:

2023

Themes:

Love & Relationships

Literary Devices:

Anaphora

a figure of speech in which words repeat at the beginning of successive clauses, phrases, or sentences

Personification

the attribution of human qualities to a non-human thing

Simile

a comparison between two unlike things using the words “like” or “as”