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David Gullette was one of the first editors of Ploughshares and is Literary Director of The Poets’ Theatre, which presented his adaptation of Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf in December 2015 and his The Boston Abolitionists in March 2017 at the Boston Athenaeum. He has also acted with the ART, Christmas Revels, Actors Shakespeare Project, and NPR’s The Spider’s Web. His book of poems, Questionable Shapes, was published by Cervena Barva Press (Somerville, MA.) in 2017.

David Gullette

GIRL GOES GREEN

“He’d been after me for ages

So I took to the woods

Planting myself in a hidden thicket

My toes lengthening rootlike

Nails disappearing into the sod

Knees knotty, fingers caked with dirt

Hair fernier, frondier, leafier

My lichen-covered limbs toughening

My shins barked and mossy my sex.

“So when he made his long-fantasized move

It was already too late.

He bloodied his lip against what he’d been sure he wanted

But I had simply become what I needed to be.”

— David Gullette

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