Volume 16:1, Winter 2015
The Sonnet Issue
Affinity with Orwell
In those days, an enthusiasm for the adverse
no one knew the depth of what had been done,
un-authoring letters, adjusting lists
as I took my turn at tables tossing back
ever lusterless hair. My carte didentite
was not enoughtwo shabby overcoats,
a cardboard case. My sister spoke only of E,
the front mans hand-rolled cigarettes, walks
in the woods waiting for words, another intoxicant
to take its effect. Nights I spent on my script, lured
on by the promise of an island address …Thats
what I called stylewhere I wokeno more
than the fringes: pastures drenched with rain,
lungs filling with second-hand smoke.
Jane Satterfield is the author of three books of poems: Her Familiars (Elixir Press, 2013), Assignation at Vanishing Point (Elixir Press Book Award, 2003), and Shepherdess with an Automatic (Towson University Prize for Literature, Washington Writers' Publishing House, 2000), as well as Daughters of Empire: A Memoir of a Year in Britain and Beyond (Demeter Press, 2009). Her awards include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in poetry, the Mslexia Women's Poetry Prize, and the 49th Parallel Poetry Prize from the Bellingham Review.