Tag: Lisa Low

When I Turned Sixteen by Lisa Low

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When I Turned Sixteen

And achieved some of the greatness young girls
aspire, outgrowing my childish body—that lanky,
long-thorned thing—and became a woman,
with hips and thighs and cup-able breasts,
enough to fill a grown man’s hands, my mother
bought me a new pair of pants. My father
must have been drinking that day, for when
I tried them on, he grabbed me from behind
and screamed with a shrill, excited, bird-like
call, sliding in his socks behind me, as if
I were a carnival. I twisted free, fled upstairs,
and locked myself in my room, spending
the rest of that friendless night alone, my face
wet against the pillow, bereft in a comfortless dark.

*

Lisa Low was first runner-up for the Shakespeare Prize at University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her work has been shortlisted for Ploughshares and has appeared in or is forthcoming in many literary journals including The Adroit Journal, The Boston Review, The Massachusetts Review, Pleiades, Southern Indian Review, Conduit, The Hopkins Review, and ONE ART. She has been nominated for Best New Poets 2025. Her chapbook, Late in the Day was issued in July 2025 from Seven Kitchens Press.

After You Left by Lisa Low

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After You Left

I have lived my life alone since then.
Raising our children alone. Waving them
onto the bus alone. Facing them nights
and mornings alone. I wish I could say
how happily we played, cold to your loss.
How we ran to the snow when you left
to roll another man with black raisin eyes
and a carrot nose, but six-year-old Sam
hid his face when you left and lay like
a plank on his bed and four-year-old Julia
spilled a mountain of pills on me where
I lay on the carpet, crying, and ever since
then we have plucked our backyard daisies
clean, saying we love him, we love him not.

*

Lisa Low’s essays, reviews, and interviews have appeared in The Massachusetts Review, The Boston Review, and The Adroit Journal. Her poetry has been shortlisted for Ploughshares and is published or forthcoming in many literary journals, among them Hopkins Review, Pleiades, One Art, Conduit, Louisiana Literature, Pennsylvania English, and Southern Indiana Review. Her chapbook, Late in the Day, is forthcoming in July 2025 from Seven Kitchens Press.

Two Poems by Lisa Low

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THANK YOU FOR LEAVING ME

Thank you for leaving me. It made me feel
so light and care free. Free to manage
the ghetto house with leaking plumbing
and falling-in floors over which our two
babies crawled, still on all fours. Thank you
for stopping to say goodbye and for
the pretty wreath tossed of parting words:
we had some good times. Thank you for
ignoring my cries for help. I know
you were busy, caught in the love sack
of I’ll never be back. Thank you for
the few dollars sent to pay the rent,
and lest I forget the divorce, thank you
for the papers delivered at work. Thank
you for the last picture I carry of you:
you in the red velvet chair, one ankle
crossed on the opposite knee, shaking out
the newspaper thoughtfully, as I groveled
at your feet; hands and knees on the floor,
sobbing and begging you not to go.
Thank you for turning my life upside down,
so I could turn everything back over
and set things right again.

* 

LIKE A WICK

I look so much like my mother you would
think when I stop to study myself in
the rose-colored square of front hall mirror,
I was looking at her ghost: the same strands
of blonde hair whipped sideways; the same blue
eyes; the same full lips smiling crookedly.
What is she so anxious to tell me? To live
my life well because I won’t live long?
That she misses me crouched in her harbor
by the wind-soaked sails? That I should confess
to the bad I’ve done? Or, that I was right:
my father’s not there. That he burns eternally,
far from the poles of her flying feet; still
whole; like a wick in a tongue of flame.

*

Lisa Low’s essays, book reviews, and interviews have appeared in The Massachusetts Review, The Boston Review, and The Adroit Journal. Her poetry has been published in many literary journals, among them Pleiades, Louisiana Literature, Pennsylvania English, Phoebe, and Southern Indiana Review.

Two Poems by Lisa Low

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LATE IN THE DAY

Late in the day when my father lay dying,
he called me to his cot and told me of
a time when I saved his life. Saved your life?
I said, not believing him. Then he said:
do you remember that time at Widow’s
Lake when, like a fool, I got in water,
thinking it would make my bad back better,
but as I lay on my side, unable to move,
and felt myself tipping, back side up,
face down in water, I saw you walking
on water beside me and called out your
name and asked for your hand. You were
only five. If you hadn’t been there that
day, that would have been the day I died.

*

MY NEIGHBOR GETS A CANCER DIAGNOSIS

What’s it like to know cancer sneaks like
a tongue of smoke around the back doors
of your life, peeking in windows between
the shadows, snaking around corners,
sniffing and moaning; wanting your suffering.
My neighbor at sixty retires, done with chemo
for now, decides to babysit his three-year-old
granddaughter, Daisy. Days, I watch them
totter down the street, his bulky hand sunk
sealed to the fresh flesh of her reached-up hand.
Or see him mowing the grass, going over and
over the bright, green stalks, not knowing when
that menace will force its fierce, forked tongue
up from soft ground to take him down again.

*

Lisa Low’s essays, book reviews, and interviews have appeared in The Massachusetts Review, The Boston Review, The Tupelo Quarterly, and The Adroit Journal. Her poetry has appeared in a variety of literary journals, among them Valparaiso Poetry Review, Pennsylvania English, Phoebe, American Journal of Poetry, Delmarva Review, and Tusculum Review.