EXPANSION INTO KRASNER

By Meghan Sterling

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I’ve measured my beauty in brightness,
in servitude. I’ve been playing it small.
I feel myself pulling away from men, from
the mirror. I am as angry as an owl. I want
a large empty space that I expand into like
a Zeppelin. Bright fabrics. Bright moon framed
by the window. A vision: I am awake in the night
and making art. Every line, every word is bold
and stares back as if to start a fight. I think of Lee
looking into the camera, rose-lipped and dark,
daring the viewer, glaring, aware of her worth
except when it came to men. I want to paint blue birds
on the walls, my poems flying around the room.
I want to be the only man in my life.

Meghan Sterling (she/her/hers) is a working mother whose poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Tahoma Literary Review, the Los Angeles Review, the Colorado Review, Rhino Poetry, Hunger Mountain and many other journals. Her collections are These Few Seeds (Terrapin Books), Self-Portrait with Ghosts of the Diaspora (Harbor Editions), Comfort the Mourners (Everybody Press) and View from a Borrowed Field (Lily Poetry Review’s Paul Nemser Book Prize). You Are Here to Break Apart (Lily Poetry Review Press), came out in April 2025 and Sick Letters from the Lovebed (Harbor Editions) is forthcoming in 2026. She was named Poet Laureate of the city of Gardiner, Maine in August, 2025. Read her work at meghansterling.com.