In Lieu of Love
Hollie Dugas
In Lieu of Love
I build a fire,
cast an imaginary
circle around me
and sleep all night
in it, consent
to its warm glow
opening my body—
the element
beckoning me
to kneel, center-
circle, rest
my head in a lap
of heat and taste
its embers. I have
half a mind to
burn everything,
give the blaze
whatever it wants,
even my small
defenseless things.
None of this can
be a waste—it is
too holy. I want to
put my own
hands in, let
the flames clean
my bones. What is
the point, if I don’t
get singed?
Hollie Dugas lives in New Mexico. Her work has been included in Barrow Street, Reed Magazine, Qu, Redivider, Porter House Review, Salamander, Poet Lore, Mud Season Review, The Louisville Review, The Penn Review, Breakwater Review, RHINO, Sixth Finch, Gordon Square Review, Phoebe, Broad River Review, and Louisiana Literature. Additionally, “A Woman’s Confession #5,162” was selected as the winner of Western Humanities Review Mountain West Writers’ Contest (2017). Hollie has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and for inclusion in Best New Poets. Most recently, her poem was selected as winner of the 22nd Annual Lois Cranston Memorial Poetry Prize at CALYX, in addition to the 2022 Heartwood Poetry Prize. She was also a finalist in the Atlanta Review’s 2022 International Poetry Contest.