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Writer's pictureEmily Corwin

Jen Rouse

The Math of Anne Sexton

I am divided. The brazen

and the long-suffering. Mad

and brilliant and ridiculous

and wrong. I am never an

easy equation. Maybe you’ll

try to hold my hand during

lunch and I’ll let you, only to purge

you from these swollen eye

sockets with sticks and empty

stones. Your words will

always wound me. So come

closer. Or don’t come at all—

in this math I never matter.

But I will make you believe

I am a multiplier of souls.

A sum of these parts will

never equal a whole—

of a me,

or a you,

or an us.

Split the petals and make me

your nursery rhyme. Your oxeye

daisy of truth. She loves me.

He loves me not.

I am divided.



Jen Rouse’s poems have appeared in Poetry, Crab Fat, Parentheses, Anti-Heroin Chic, Wicked Alice, Gulf Stream, and elsewhere. Her work will be included this summer in the Mississippi Review 2018 Prize Issue. Rouse’s chapbook, Acid and Tender, was published in 2016 by Headmistress Press. Find her at jen-rouse.com and on Twitter @jrouse.


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