Self-Portrait in a Cleveland Mall by Gabrielle Frahm-Claffey

Maybe it's not so different from a girl's rage

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Self-Portrait in a Cleveland Mall

by Gabrielle Frahm-Claffey

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A girl in a green dress with a white sash for Christmas
is easily ruffled.

Why can't you stand still?
Why do you talk so much?

Yes, the mouth is stuffed
with words, the smile a bit wry
as the flash bears down
like car headlights,
and the eyes, you can hardly see, but they're no less red
than the glassy eyes of the paper doves in the tree.

Red weeps them pink
over time—Pink doves!
How pathetic! All crumpled and blurry
like someone went ahead and washed them.

Or worse, they were flushed
out—Still the poise!

Maybe it's not so different from a girl's rage
that fizzes into being as in a dark room.
Poof! Blind rage: the shock
of color seeps in.

In The Arcade, more a dingy tunnel between two far streets,
you see the snow coming down fast. Back you go
wandering your day off,
all your watered-down rage,
haul it into the white,
feel it become the sadness that crushes you.

First published in The Cincinnati Review (Issue 22.1, Spring 2025)