January Gill O’Neil

Ghostlight

You said you wanted fire.
My tongue finds your mouth’s

small corners as we breathe together.
Light chooses a hollow and falls inside—

the ghosted things we say
in the language of the fingers.

I became. We stare at the clock’s
red numbers. For a moment

in the bathroom mirror
my face is alluvial. Maybe

I am two people, twice myself:
the flicker inside a candle and its shadow

on the wall as the moon rises in the dark.

Back to Issue X…

January Gill O'Neil is an associate professor at Salem State University, and the author of Glitter Road (forthcoming, 2024), Rewilding (2018), Misery Islands (2014), and Underlife (2009), all published by CavanKerry Press. From 2012-2018, she was the executive director of the Massachusetts Poetry Festival. Her poems and articles have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day series, American Poetry Review, Poetry, and Sierra magazine, among others. The recipient of fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, Cave Canem, and the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, O'Neil was the 2019-2020 John and Renée Grisham Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi. She currently serves as the 2022-2023 board chair of the Association of Writers and Writers Programs (AWP).