miniatures

in the store of small desires i touch nothing,
afraid to break a delicate plaster hand,
dishes the size of dimes. i won’t decorate
another house where i don’t fit.
i’m almost ready to risk something
the size of my life & full of blood,
to ride into town with my twin fears:
obsession, the jacket of knives
i look so good in –
desire, a foul animal
gone stupid in the heat.

Cassandra de Alba is a poet living in Massachusetts. Her work has appeared in Underblong,The Shallow Ends, and Tinderbox, among other publications. Her chapbooks habitats (Horse Less Press, 2016) and ORB (Reality Hands, 2018) are about deer and the moon, respectively, and Ugly/Sad is forthcoming from Glass Poetry Press in 2020. She is a co-host at the Boston Poetry Slam at the Cantab Lounge, a poetry reader for IDK Magazine, and an associate editor at Pizza Pi Press.