Thornfoot
The woman had thorns for feet, which left
two deep punctures in the flesh of the earth,
and on cement made high hollow sounds
like a glass flute tapped for attention.
She had learned a mostly normal gait,
and spent time in the evenings
applying fine-grit sandpaper to each shard
in turn, which did not hurt, not exactly,
but did let her wear most size 9 styles
from a few sensible brands.
And she had learned that it was okay
to be different: people often liked
when she talked about the thorns,
especially at parties, when she could be
bright and funny about it,
and it was too dark to see her feet.
*
Self Portrait with teacup
after Glen Martin Taylor
The spoon–silver, tarnished, green patina
growing in its shallow bowl– has been cut
into seven pieces, its ornately
sculpted lines interrupted by thin air
and wire (maybe medical or fishing)
looped and tied, tails stuck up from the stitching.
The porcelain cup and its small saucer
are just the same, shattered and thickly sewn,
motif of flowers hidden among thorns.
The world is good, and worth saving. You, too,
are worth the wire it will take. Even if
you can no longer hold the dark water
you thought you’d been made for, even if
your jagged rim cuts every lip that tries to drink.
*
Rest stop
There was this sense, almost as strong
as a tide, that the way to go was West,
which was not a real place but a fact
of being in the future, where one
would be some better version of oneself,
unburdened by the ruins of the East
tipping into the gray, uncaring sea,
and the way to go West was along
the highway, that wide human river
of endless movement, and that the cure
for loneliness was not to find oneself,
which sounded both frightening and
undesirable, but to lose oneself
in the shining shoals as they raced
towards the sea, each individual purpose
(or lack thereof)
one line of light in the bright stream.
*
Mirabella Mitchell is a poet and ceramic artist living in Charlottesville, Virginia. She is a graduate of the University of Virginia’s MFA program and Princeton University’s undergraduate creative writing program. Her first chapbook, The Great Get by (2026, Dancing Girl Press) is a meditation on depression that comprises thirty erasures of a single page of The Great Gatsby. Her prose and poetry has been published in The Cumberland River Review, Meridian, and elsewhere. She is a member of Milkweed Clay Studio.