ANGELA SIEW is a multilingual poet with a BA from Brown University and an MFA from Emerson College. She was most recently a Peter Taylor Fellow for the 2023 Kenyon Review Writers Workshop and an Administrative Staff Scholar for the 2023 & 2024 Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. She has also received support from the City of Boston and the Community of Writers Poetry Workshop. Her work has been published in Salamander, Crab Orchard Review and Art New England, among others. A chapbook, Coming Home, is available from Cut Bank (University of Montana). A former private tutor and English language teacher, she has also taught overseas in Chile and Italy. She currently teaches online poetry workshops for Grub Street and the International Women's Writing Guild. Learn more at angelasiew.com.
It doesn’t scare me
to remember he placed
his hands around my throat.
We were in bed, and still.
I could not see him.
From behind, he put
his labor-roughened hand
around the soft of my neck,
a horseshoe
curled around the stake.
The heel of his hand warmed
the most vulnerable part of me.
I did not have time to question
nor did I want to.
Had we been standing,
he could have lifted me up,
my toes just touching the ground,
and I still would not have been
in danger.
He brought his other hand around.
I did not flinch as he
continued to measure,
did not
once fear what he was making of me
would squeeze or cinch tight.
I did not think he would hurt me.
And I don’t know why.
Volume 15.1, winter 25
Angela Siew
