Donora A. Rihn

JANUARY

Ask what an assault is,
I will tell you:
my body clanging hot
with virus,
glass by our bedside.
Thick paper,
paper you could cut a man with.
How I love him
in red light, white cells. Green.


Donora reads "January":



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Donora confesses: "This poem was inspired by having the flu during the holidays, which always feels like an assault itself, and the detritus that Christmas leaves behind. I am always hyperaware of my body and its surroundings, especially during that time of love and heat and color; here's to the new year."

DONORA A. RIHN is the author of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: An Election Cycle (with Andrew Rihn; Moria Books/Locofo Chaps, 2017), a poetry chapbook that was sent to the White House to protest the first 100 days of the presidency of Donald Trump. She is also the author of Jeff Bridges (Cobalt Press, 2016), The Plagiarist (NEA, 2015), The Aphasia Poems (S▲L, 2014), and several other works of poetry and theory. Rihn’s work often appears in Hint Fiction (W.W. Norton & Company), Pedagogy, Women in Clothes (Penguin Random House), and other anthologies and journals, and she frequently performs her work across the United States. She lives in a tiny house in the Portage Lakes area with her husband and their two rescue dogs.