“Won’t You Be My Valentine” by Elizabeth Hoover
By now you are just the space
my lover touches me around, his care
unwittingly conjuring you. You left
an opening to talk to me—your voice
speckles through—but I miss you
when I feel unknowable, a tongue
too swollen to tell. My body is a dream
I once had of freedom, a foreign
thing that eats silver and loves spiders. How
can I tell my lover of my craving for metal,
how will he understand the watchful
eye of the spider. I long for you—
my only witness—no one else
knows me in that particular
crisis. Not even me. Only you
can tell me what my face becomes,
which animal I sound like, only you
can embroider the scene—the doe gutted
or the doe leaping away.
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Elizabeth Hoover Artist Statement:
Elizabeth Hoover is a feminist poet who enjoys working on projects with a conceptual or
research element. She received the 2015 StoryQuarterly’s essay prize, judged by Maggie
Nelson. Her poetry has appeared in [Pank], The Los Angeles Review, and The Pitch,
among others. She was a finalist for the 2015 Orlando Prize. She is a freelance book critic
and lives in Pittsburgh with her partner and a cat named Brad. You can see more of her
work at ehooverink.com.
