Poem: The Lonely Art Of Collecting Olives

Watch to be sated. The brain nestsa splintered thought that seedsits own creation. A hand whitewith secret buds extends a leatheredleaf. With the sun on your eyelids, clutchwhat is dripping, droppingforward in flesh-covered waves.A new ground is sweetly broken.Shield your face from the sonorousheat. Enough will be your lotto inherit. Less will be the branchat your feet. Eileen G’Sell's cultural criticism, essays, and poetry can be found in Salon, VICE, Boston Review, DAME, DIAGRAM, Conduit, Ninth Letter, Secret Behavior, and the Denver Quarterly, among others; in 2013, she was awarded the 2013 American Literary Review prize for poetry. Her chapbooks are available from Dancing Girl and BOAAT Press, and she is a features editor for The Rumpus. She currently teaches rhetoric and poetry at Washington University, and creative writing for the Prison Education Project at Missouri Eastern Correctional Center. In early 2018, her first full-length book, Life After Rugby, will be published by Gold Wake Press. She lives in St. Louis and New York. Poetry by Eileen G'Sell also on Alivemag.com:The Reason The Moon MovesThe Spring Of Things