MARGARET SAIGH

PILGRIM

Nauseous from the pain of my period
Plus the humidity
Letting myself
Breathe and ponder the automatic
People movers ferrying travelers
Between security and the concourses at the Pittsburgh
International Airport—the site of a lot
Of my sadness, empty and steel, glittered and alone
On a Saturday night in January
Waiting for my baggage to appear
On the conveyor
Looking at a fellow
Passenger’s pink shoes
Which I had followed
All the way
From gate to baggage
Claim, unknown to myself, and the love
I thought I had deserved

HELP U SELL

There are five eight ounce bottles of ice mountain in an alcove of the fridge

I was so hungry I jammed a spoon into the sterno

I was so so I sold food.

In her review of our stay the air bnb host writes Great guests

I never rate her. I couldn’t handle the shame

of not stripping the bedsheets. What does it mean

for something to break down?

In every documentary about climate change they use the same b-roll

the Great Pacific Garbage Patch; plastic factories outside Houston belching BCPs

my neighbors

taking all the balls out of their garage and throwing them around.

The fetish of the soft huggable body

of the Pleasant Company’s American Girl dolls.

My estranged cousin roomed with my geologist boyfriend at isotope camp.

My cousin and I used to play with our American Girl dolls in the basement;

behind a sheer curtain stitched with moons and stars we maneuvered their vinyl limbs.

Quit idling, a child is breathing

I was busy sucking my teeth to pop the retainer out

rubbing two strands of pubic hair between thumb and forefinger

I love you so much I am glad we are apart

Margaret Saigh is a writer, dancer, and educator. She is the author of the chapbook CROSSED IN THE DARKER LIGHT OF TERROR (dancing girl press 2022), a graduate of the MFA program at the University of Pittsburgh, and the creator of circlet, a virtual poetry workshop. Her poems have been published in TYPO and Peach Mag and are forthcoming in Calyx Journal and Exposition Review, among others.