Marisa Crawford appeared in Issue 36 with Valentine’s Day, a poem where sorority emblems, attic space, names, fabric, bodies, rumor, and love letters gather into a dense field of desire.
Marisa Crawford in the historical archive
Issue 36’s contributor note says Crawford grew up in New York and Connecticut and was living in San Francisco while working as a copywriter. It also records poems in Invisible Ear, Big Bell, GlitterPony, and Parthenon West, along with The Haunted House, winner of the 2008 Gatewood Prize.
Valentine’s Day
The poem moves through a skeleton key, sorority sweaters, candles, a drinking fountain, violets, a lunch pail, a megaphone, plumbing, attic space, freckles, spiders, fabric, and letters. Each image arrives with the pressure of private association.
Names, letters, and rumor
Crawford repeatedly turns letters into both alphabet and message. A name can be rearranged, a varsity letter can be sewn into a jacket, and a love letter can become part of the poem’s physical world. Rumor travels through names as readily as through speech.
Fabric, attic, and body
The attic becomes a recurring chamber where sweaters, spiders, plumbing, bodies, and Valentine imagery overlap. Fabric shifts from clothing to enclosure, until the speaker finds herself caught inside the weave.
Desire as material
Cold water, auburn freckles, live wire, cloth, hair, candles, and hearts give desire a tactile vocabulary. The poem keeps emotional intensity attached to surfaces and objects, making attraction feel woven into the material scene.
Further reading
Continue with Issue 36, the archive’s guide to imagery in poetry, and its overview of modern poetry.