Girl-King (Akron Series in Poetry Quotes

“Points of Issue
Errors or peculiarities in a book that help to differentiate it from other editions.

No one else's marginalia inside. An unbroken spine and a pliable binding. No one else's marginalia
unless it was penciled into her first pages then thoroughly erased. No ellipses but in the last chapters and then only in soliloquy.
No strands of hair in the meadow chapter, nothing ripped out in the two after that.
And halfway-a blank page, and a scrawl and dash from the girl. The final story of the back garden and her coiled braids and the dappled grey you kept too long.
The harmonica on the dashboard and the girl who taught you your scales. And the book
you were always reading, the pulled-off, pockmarked cover, the weight. The night
you left it in the trunk bed and in the morning its swollen pages. The girl reading your father's Wordsworth, the scrolling clouds in the meadow, your hands steady on her heaving chest. The final story of the back garden and the coiled girl
telling you no. The pages after that.”
― Brittany Cavallaro, Girl-King (Akron Series in Poetry

“Magician's Girl
You’ll know when. My gossamer singlet flushes
to its ends in fire. The black hats, too, begin
to hate you. One wrong word & they curl their brims

to reveal knives. By Thursday, the floor translates

your footfalls as Morse code. At your slow soft shoe,
the oubliette opens. Another narrow not-death
& the curtains become girls again. They leave

you again. They don’t love you like Mother does,

bound to the velvet board, febrile Mother willing
your water-tank, your white-gloved touch,
the part of her night where she is finally a half

of you. Despite the involvement of blades. Despite

my holding-down hands, their quiver. She knows
about your knob-kneed bedmates, their soft
white hair. Girls lost in the long warren

of your arms. Big-toothed girls, girls who disappear

& disappear. You blame yourself. Why? You
don’t know that what you do in the dark
of your room—I do it too? Watch closely. Here

are my man’s hands. Here is my girl’s mouth, speaking—”
― Brittany Cavallaro, Girl-King (Akron Series in Poetry