Copyright © 2025 Otis Nebula Press. All rights reserved.

Isabel Sullivan is a poet and preschool teacher in Alameda, CA.

Poesms 

Abroad, a road in western Washington. 

I am not an Arkansas highway!


Can I get you anything, my blueness? 

A hot bath, an ice pack for your head?


What can I do for you, my badbitchness? 

More sunglasses for your pockets? 

More boyfriends, more girlfriends

to sooth your temporality? 


Your fairweatherness? 

More feathers in your cap? 

More photographs? 


Oh, my deluded one, what may I serve you?

Whispers? Kisses? Written correspondence? 


Let me dull your imagination. 

Let me bathe you in despair. 

Let me pool your wasted wishes.

Let me write you forever.  


Dreamscrape

Dead grandparents, dead 
great grandparents. 

Pregnancy scare, 

the cast of Gossip Girl. 


A redhead who holds my hand 

declares, “We are holding hands.”


Eyes driving shutting.  

Driving eyes shut. Wake up.


Cursed to wear dino p.j.s under nightgown

the rest of my life. 


Dinner every minute of every day. 

Death on a farm.


My cat, 

at times.  




It’s Been Seven Years in Poem Time


Every person has an off switch. 

The jury is still out on tenderness and sincerity, 

at least as far as poetry. 


I wind into myself:

I need my wickedness and self-absorption like 

I need air and water. 

I need my dyings, 

my head-on-straightenings, 

my self-aggrandizement and 

my caffeination. 

An off switch. 

I’ll be an ear until I’m told to be a mouth. 


Poets have already said about the birds and the forests. 

I wind into myself. 

I’m standing on one foot, 

shaking my wings dry. 

I’m talking about heat, 

about preference. 

I’m talking about revenge. 


I’m going

self-referential. 

I hold my pen aloft: “Craft.”

It’s all invented. 




Watch It Happen


I’m birthing some 

thing new.

It could have been You’ve Got Mail.

Now I stand at the threshold of goodbye. 


I want to break up with my robot astrologer. 

Call it off. Wrap it up. 


I’ll take my nonsense off the table. 

I’ll spirit-of-confessionalism my way into oblivion. 

I’ll cross the threshold. 


He was not in my dream. 

I noticed. 

I want to break up with liminality. 

I want to break up with goodbye. 


I am new-mooning myself into universal estrangement. 

Oh, my robot astrologer’s little humblisms, 

my little obfuscations. 


In pursuit of warmth, 

I blur my edges,  

dissolve the boundaries of my mental and physical bodies. 


It’s all imag-ery:

The smell of roses. 

The knife in my pocket. 

The sand in my hair. 


A person is not a dwelling, yes–

good thing I am not a person. 


I fail to see the edges.



I Give My Pens Their Medicine


I met myself this morning 

in the grief dreaming brings. 

The pretendness of you ruins 

my aloneness. 


Leave me to my dishes and my solitaire.


Nearly imperceptible, 

you haunt my nighttimes. 

I’ve both asked you to and not to. 


Last night was so abject, though I won’t go into it. 

To do so would be a tall order for a woman who woke up the way I did. 


Top of my hat to this day. 


I take off my clothes. 

You are disappearing. 

We take off our shoes. 

You are gone. 


I trick myself 

into sleeping beside you, close

and not touching. 

That is the string between us. 


Cherry blossoms circle a street in North Portland. 

In Alameda, I curse the primrose, my enemy, 

right there on the sidewalk. 

I ache for Opelousas. 


You can say a place. (Berkeley!)

You can be a place. (Texarkana!)

You can say a flower. (Morning glory!)

You can be the wind. (Woosh!)


How do people live places?

How can I explain that twenty-four hours ago

I considered a move to…

The Hudson Valley, baby! 

What business do I have in upstate New York, 

with its winters and its Vaudevillian heritage?


I can’t be trusted around 

handsome men. 

Handsomeness is not understanding. 


I seal a forever door between us. 

You shrink a few years. 


I would put my hand on your shoulder if 

I had any courage

at all. 


The refrigerator replaces my sunrises. 

The youthful buffalo replace my horses. 

How I long to be a puppet and a bird

today. 

I have my five minutes and I have my ten years. 

I just hope I’m not married. 

I’m just not that human, 

and there’s no career for a winter. 


I revel

in my specificity 

I mean my ego 

I mean my singularity 

I mean my justlikeeveryoneelseness

I mean my desperation. 


Mentally, I’m at the Golden Corral with a bread roll in my fist. 

Physically, I’m 

at my kitchen table

contorted over a legal pad

moaning about you.


Where do I end?

When it comes to writing long, 

it’s nonsense, 

it’s self-pity, 

it’s what I have to say. 

I need a rest from what I’ve done here. 


My passionflower tells me vines have eyes.

I didn’t read my horoscope this morning. 

That’s a lie.


The honey of me makes for a sticky exit. 

I don’t want to heal yet, 

I say as if I could. 

I don’t want to leave this hurting, 

I say as if I could. 


Loneliness has eyes.