Erica Miriam Fabri and two poems
Erica Miriam Fabri is a Brooklyn-based poet, performer, educator, and photographer. Her first book, Dialect of a Skirt, was a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize. Her second collection, Morphology, won the Jack McCarthy Book Prize and was published in 2025. She teaches writing and performance poetry in New York.
Issue 29 records “The Blood of the Fish,” dedicated to Gustav Klimt, and “The French Quail.” The first poem moves through Klimt’s paintings, figures, flowers, bodies, beauty, and desire. The second begins with animal monogamy and culinary description before turning toward the imagined grief of a faithful male bird.
The Blood of the Fish
The surviving poem is dedicated to Gustav Klimt and develops through a sequence of transformed visual motifs: water snakes, pregnancy, Eve, red hair, poetry, love, sleep, carnations, daisies, a first kiss, and the bodily knowledge of beauty. Its language repeatedly converts the titles and images of paintings into physical definitions.
The French Quail
Monogamy is rare in mammals. Only a handful
have ever been faithful lovers: beavers, otters, bats, a couple of rodents,
porcupines, dolphins, certain foxes, a few hoofed goats, and a primate or two.
Birds, on the other hand, serve as the archetype of fidelity. The Common
Quail, favored breed in French cuisine, famous for her small, plump body,
eaten complete with bones, either thyme-marinated, pregnant
with goat cheese, or drowned in a creamy grape sauce—are most delicate
when presented on a platter encircled by her whole brood of pickled eggs.
But when I think of this meal—the entire family, minus the man,
I can’t help but ache for him—he who makes love to only one hen
in all his life, wandering in the grass, hunting for any sight of her—
the feather he most adores—and their very own clutch
of cream and brown speckled eggs, that he would not dare to make
with any other bird but her.
Books and later work
Fabri’s author biography records Dialect of a Skirt, Morphology, her teaching, performance work, and visual projects. The Academy of American Poets documents her poetry and teaching, while Poets & Writers records the 2025 collection and Jack McCarthy Book Prize.