Maya Ribault
I Quit
Accept this as my letter of resignation.
In case you’re wondering
(and/or are concerned),
I plan to hitch up to the night
calling inside my womb.
Spot me now behind the counter
Negative Capability crawling
up my left arm, a firefly shimmying
at the nape of my neck
like my aunt’s hidden star.
See me shaking up mixed magic
in tumblers shiny as blades,
pouring out wanna-be rainbows
for patrons I casually call Love
while I comfort Daddy on his stool.
I’m the same age now
as he was in that Alpine photo,
almost destroyed, still wholly lovable.
May this find you somehow.
Aerogramme
Horace, I hope you’re okay—
I heard a zookeeper soothes you
at night when you’re scared.
I send you light & love from here.
I know all the ways
I’ve been spared, the edge
omnipresent to me. Don’t ask me
to draw a cliff: I watch the ravens
riding shafts of air for show.
Horace, the horrors happen
again & again. I’m sorry I can’t
stop the shelling. I wake to whisper
a lullaby in your ear.
Are the trees also blooming in Kyiv?
Pardon Day
Somewhere it was time but here you knelt
in the anteroom in your bobby socks
until you heard the original cry
still trapped inside you, encased
in gilded glass. Who’ll drag it out
of you on Pardon Day like a saint’s skull
to be paraded about on men’s shoulders
through the village alive with May gorse?
And was it really his skull?
And was it really my cry?
I invite you to the deeper things.
Maya Ribault’s poetry, including a translation, has appeared in Agni, Bloodroot, Cloudbank, North American Review, Pratik, Speak, The New Yorker, and TSR Online. Her chapbook, Hôtel de la Providence, was published by Finishing Line Press. Her poem “Society of Fireflies” was recently selected to appear in A Century of Poetry in The New Yorker: 1925–2025.
