Love as a reference librarian

Recommend me a lover

in softcover, so their body

might show the world

how I’ve opened them.

Give me someone with a

thick spine and pages I

will never tire of folding

myself into. Show me a

love who I can lose myself

with, who tells a funny story,

who I can check out again

and again, who I can reread

into the earliest hours of the

morning. Give me a lover who

lets me hang up their dust jacket

when they come home to me—

but please, more than anything,

recommend me a lover who can

be my nonfiction and my fairytale.

Translated into Spanish by Abigail Kloha:

Translated into French by Autumn Mayer:

Poem and translations originally published in volume VIII of the Translate Iowa Project's Boundless magazine (p. 12-14, 2024) at the University of Iowa.