by Sabrina Tom

Doni Rath, *Pottery in New Mexico,* Nikon D3400 photograph, 2024. Courtesy of the artist.

Three Poems

Sabrina Tom | JAN 2026 | Issue 50

Agnes Martin moved to New Mexico to give herself a life

Down to her last body, she asks a friend to wash her face,
hands soiled, eyes closed as salt
pours into her mouth, covers her head
on the walk to school and the lonesome journey back,
she asks a friend to hold her breath, unspun braids,
even that she cannot shoulder
alone, reading maps penned by animals
who hold no power over nonanimals,
books left inside the poor house
built inside a cloud, counteroffer to brittle waterfall
from the spigot on the edge of the prairie
where women neglect to put their boots back on, cross
into family life. What's so great about a hot shower anyway? Wild mares
don't ask permission from the herd rage barefoot and buck wild.

A classification of Christina Aguilera as staurolite

That year was only our second Greek Easter
but we felt the ritual like bone,
foundational, cellular, animal lives ages before St. Patrick,
whose name came up, naturally, in a conversation around food,
a passage from spanakopita to corned beef & cabbage to kimchee,
the geology of sound, many languages formed
us seven around a stubbornly square table illumined by string lights
until one late arriving guest made us even—
Her hair waterfalled the senses, her ample bosom was the only curve we needed,
we wondered if she was a real saint, but when she sang none of us rose to heaven.
So we widened the discourse. Instead of vocal chords, a bed, instead of painted lips,
a mirrored whetstone sharpening work and kinship. Our minerality—
albatross, anggitay, tardigrade, hawkmoth, quarterhorse, demon, snake—

Reading the archives of the Jeanne Smith Collection in the Woksape Tipi Library

slant
in the posture
of a professor
of inquiry
practiced
since she learned
to read
silent and
indexed and tabled
before she was chair
she was wet
with the resistance
of rock
dressed in rain
slick and slime
in plain sight

Sabrina Tom is a writer, rider, love sponge. Her work has appeared in An Encyclopedia of Radical Helping published by Thick Press, and elsewhere.