from I FOLLOW THE SUN WHERE ITS SHADOW GOES

/

Before I did not think 
of seasons as difficult. Still my feet slipped
against the bottom of the pool. The new gods taught

me boredom:
the heft of a hand, how the sisters helped me step
into my pants. There’s lots of ways to weigh 

things, to measure 
the world’s soft ache. I learned the name of a light 

that’s gold, of what somebody called god once:
just a canyon and some sludge

//

A cougar sounds just like a woman screaming. I did it in front of the bathroom mirror once, I
tried to, but scared myself, the scream stuck there forever, my face between the layers of glass,
repeating. It’s on my list of what not to do in front of a mirror again: like crying, 
or acid. I turned the glasses over in the cabinet. I traced the lip of the bowl in the sink

---

Maureen McHugh

Maureen McHugh lives & writes in Tucson, Arizona and received her MFA from the University of Arizona. She has previously been published in Phantom books, Conjunctions, Anti-, PANK, elimae, kill author, Third Coast, and others, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She co-edits The Destroyer.