3 poems

by Chrissy Stegman

dear pine trees,

I have this desire to cut down the roses I see 

through my library window. The feminine urge to burn it.

Rip every last blossom off the branches & tatter

the pink into worthlessness.

dear PTBGK,

My right hand stopped working yesterday.

Today is better.

I do feel alive. I know I am consuming a starry sky

drop of poison

after poison after poison I wake

alive inside

a poison &

each morning, comments arrive in my mind:

Stop, stop, stop. Not another drop. Tick tock.

dear II,

My brother sent me a song.

The title was let our names be forgotten but

I will forever remember our middle names.

Chrissy Stegman is a poet/writer who lives in Baltimore, Maryland. Her work has been featured in various journals, most recently Rejection Letters and Gone Lawn with work forthcoming in Gargoyle Magazine, Anti-Heroin Chic, Red Ogre Review, Stone Circle Review, and Fictive Dream. She is the recipient of the 2022 Patricia Bibby Idyllwild Arts scholarship for poetry and placed second for the 2022 Ellen Conroy Kennedy Poetry Prize. She is a 2023 Best of the Net Nominee.