Fair Verona
art by Virgil Suárez
by Olivia Pierce Graham
this place looks like a house
built to eradicate your memories
into cobwebs wrecked with the breath
that I once felt
when I shivered as if covered
under the tatters of a blanket
where we were uncertain and
potent and new and
I was horrified
human underneath you
in an unfamiliar house
you’d live in with someone else
until they disintegrated
from your gentle mouth
tearing at me
with a thousand spiders fighting
beside your bedroom wall
where I stained your pillow bloody and
you refused to close your eyes
thinking about my body
weighted down
and waking up alone
Olivia Pierce Graham holds an MFA in Poetry from The New School where she was a recipient of the Paul Violi Poetry Prize. Her poems have appeared in Cathexis Northwest Press, Dazed Santa, Jackdaw Press, Killer Nashville Magazine, Midsummer Dream House, Oroboro, River & South Review, and others. She is the author of award-winning chapbooks Vestige (Press Pause Press, 2026) and Gloom of Excruciating Desires (Cherry Dress Chapbooks, 2022). She currently serves as Acquisitions Editor for Lit Fox Books and Author Interviews Editor for Austin Poetry Review.
Virgil Suárez was born in Havana, Cuba, in 1962. At the age of twelve he arrived in the United States. He received an MFA from Louisiana State University in 1987. He is the author of eight collections of poetry, most recently 90 MILES: SELECTED AND NEW, published by the University of Pittsburgh Press. His work has appeared in a multitude of magazines and journals internationally. His 10th volume of poetry, THE PAINTED BUNTING’S LAST MOLT, was be published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in the Spring of 2020. He is also the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Grant and an Individual Artist Grant from the State of Florida and a Latino Book Prize.
