By Rebecca Foust
Featured Art: “Clare (she/her)” by Jemma Leigh Roe

in deference & abject homage
     to your late
     & i mean a lifetime-late
     barrage of attention
i have forsworn   underwear
     ever wearing it   i hope   again
& all manner of constricting things
     shoes early bedtimes chores
     obligatory wearing of rings
     & more deadlines than i care to count
i can’t help myself & that’s the point
     i could not erase you if i would
     & i never would

here i am dejected   low
here i am   hatching crazy plans
     to blow town  or  up  everything
here i am living half my life   below
     the ground  or am Lear
     wild upon the moors   wearing
     nothing   but a heather crown

here i am most abjectly yours
     writing what i’d rather say & do
     always in deference to
     flown-away   stupidly-squandered time
& always    Love—to you

---

Rebecca Foust’s books include You Are Leaving the American Sector: Love Poems (Backbone Press 2024) and Only (Four Way Books 2022). Her poems won the James Dickey Prize and Fischer Prize in 2024, and in recent years, the Pablo Neruda, James Hearst, and Poetry International prizes. Other recognitions include fellowships from The Frost Place, Hedgebrook, MacDowell, and Sewanee, and a Marin County Poet Laureateship.