Cobblestones

/ Issue 11.1 /

Evenly unadorned
and fungible as nuns
so that, rain,
wind, sleet and dust-
worn down to smooth,
innocuous loaves,
there can be found
defined
in the vigilant
anonymity confronting
each trussed foot –
infant, dowager,
revenant, elegant
drunkard and swain –
a beauty in turn
complement,
unshivering,
virtuous and brute.

Hailey Leithauser

Hailey Leithauser

Hailey Leithauser's books are Swoop(2013), winner of the Poetry Foundation's Emily Dickinson First Book Award and the Towson Prize for Literature, and Saint Worm (2019). She is currently at work on a new manuscript, poems from which have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Agni, the Alaska Quarterly Review, The Birmingham Poetry Review, the Cincinnati Review/, the Gettysburg Review, and other journals.
Hailey Leithauser

Also by Hailey Leithauser (see all)

Author: Hailey Leithauser

Hailey Leithauser's books are Swoop (2013), winner of the Poetry Foundation's Emily Dickinson First Book Award and the Towson Prize for Literature, and Saint Worm (2019). She is currently at work on a new manuscript, poems from which have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Agni, the Alaska Quarterly Review, The Birmingham Poetry Review, the Cincinnati Review/, the Gettysburg Review, and other journals.