Self-Portrait as a Tree in November

Louisa Schnaithmann

I am slanted, bare. My leaves slip

off me, pretty things. They will not

last. Let us consider my branches—

not arms with which to reach, but

to strangle the thin blue air.

Louisa Schnaithmann is the author of Plague Love (Moonstone Press, 2021) and a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee. Her most recent work has appeared in Anti-Heroin Chic and Grey Sparrow Journal. She is the consulting editor for ONE ART: a journal of poetry and lives in southeastern Pennsylvania.