Rebecca Foust

Rebecca Foust’s poems are in Hudson Review, Notre Dame Review, Sewanee Review, and Woman’s Review of Books. Her books include California Dreaming (shortlisted for the 2012 Kathryn A. Morton Prize), All That Gorgeous Pitiless Song (Many Mountains Moving Book Prize, nominated for the Poets’ and Paterson Prizes) and God, Seed (Foreword BOTY Award).

Petals

Petals of the pink camellia
plaster wet asphalt

each Magritte heart bent
off the vertical axis

sad valentines
posted to a wounded world

sorrow the stone in my side
you my child leave

no thorn unturned
what I know of dwarf stars

is what swallows your eyes when
you look into my face

you still look away is it fear for
me or of me—

such dense collapsed darkness—
like crepe paper

and school paste these hearts
melt in the rain