Five Poems

Virgo 

“Aren’t you tired 
of being so pure?”

Sometimes someone 
tells me something

with a voice 
I’ve known forever.

Who can I pay 
to describe it to? 

Being trapped under 
a maypole, silk

strands latticing 
overhead. Patting

patched grass like 
I’ve drunkenly 

lost my keys.
I can see the

sky, but only 
through a crevice.

Lidless

Three kinds of 
boredom. Marrying 
the man in leather 
shoes that click 
against marbled 
office floors. Filling 
the house with plants 
and propagations, 
watering them bi-weekly. 
Come spring, I won’t want 
the job anyways. 
Desperation as in taking 
the rose quartz 
and swallowing it whole. 

Something Sacred Lives Within Me

miu miu archive clogs, ivory flatware, 
dracaena trees, Punt e Mes, 
rosehip oil, a lipstick mirror

Feminine Impatience 

I didn’t arrive at this quaint sidestreet

to debate meaning. Abandoning 

philosophy. A lonely field, there 

is holy water on the hilltop; 

a woman with outstretched arms.

Here and There

Tiers of my heart. I languish 

in wait. Yank the clovers, 

pit the cherries, weigh

my options. I want for 

village. Rill of chimes; 

stream that winds the 

valley. Seclusion from 

that urbane lust. Lemon tree 

bearing fruit for an empty

field. Again, I am left

with my central longing.

∩

Gabrielle Woolley lives in Philadelphia, PA and is a TA for ModPo, a free online course about Modern Poetry. She is the editor of Communal Poetic Archive (Tomorrow Today & Clockface Press, 2026) and of CHAT, a journal about the Philadelphia DIY community.