K.M. Preston: ‘Sylvia Plath Groans’

Sylvia Plath Groans

My dad’s heart gave out one early morning.
Grief, not respectable, was a family straitjacket
lying deadweight on the self, explored only
through salted water in the darkest of places.

I wish I could have been like Sylvia Plath, bulldozing
her feelings through the shock of social nicety,
letting pain soak through poems that do not judge
but fit snug, as warm milk around the cracks and chips

of a porcelain heart.

K.M. Preston