Second Seance
Carolyn Guinzio
Spirit, why do you lean on English
to tell us the afterscape lacks flowers—
that there, even the corpses of corpse
blooms have sunk into unmarked graves?
How is it you climbed the metal steps
of this particular alphabet to reach
the sentence that says, First, I went up
to the roof? The route, tortured with tolls
and rules, is slow, postponing our arrival
at an understanding. Our questions,
Spirit, should require one of two short
answers: The one that ends with the snake
awake and the other that ends in sleep.
Carolyn Guinzio‘s eighth book is Cameo Blue (2026, Carnegie Mellon). Earlier books include A Vertigo Book (2021, The Word Works), and Meanwhile in Arkansas (2025), winner of the Quarterly West Chapbook Prize. She is the 2025 recipient of The Porter Prize, given to an Arkansas writer. Her website is https://carolynguinzio.my.canva.site
Table of Contents for A Formal Feeling