Gabrielle Calvocoressi

Gabrielle Calvocoressi (1974-present) was born in Connecticut and studied at Sarah Lawrence College and received his MFA from Columbia University. She has served as a Visiting Professor at various universities and is the Poetry Editor at Large for the Los Angeles Review of Books. She now teaches at the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers and University of North Carolina Chapel-Hill and is the director for the Frost Place Conference on Poetry. Source

Miss you. Would like to take a walk with you.

Do not care if you just arrive in your skeleton.

Would love to take a walk with you. Miss you.

Would love to make you shrimp saganaki.

Like you used to make me when you were alive.

Love to feed you. Sit over steaming

bowls of pilaf. Little roasted tomatoes

covered in pepper and nutmeg. Miss you.

Would love to walk to the post office with you.

Bring the ghost dog. We’ll walk past the waterfall

and you can tell me about the after.

Wish you. Wish you would come back for a while.

Don’t even need to bring your skin sack. I’ll know

you. I know you will know me even though. I’m

bigger now. Grayer. I’ll show you my garden.

I’d like to hop in the leaf pile you raked but if you

want to jump in? I’ll rake it for you. Miss you

standing looking out at the river with your rake

in your hand. Miss you in your puffy blue jacket.

They’re hip now. I can bring you a new one

if you’ll only come by. Know I told you

it was okay to go. Know I told you

it was okay to leave me. Why’d you believe me?

You always believed me. Wish you would

come back so we could talk about truth.

Miss you. Wish you would walk through my

door. Stare out from the mirror. Come through

the pipes.

Published:

2021

Length:

Regular

Literary Movements:

Contemporary

Anthology Years:

2023

Themes:

Death & Loss

Poems of the Everyday