Poster Child

The world is gone
outside.

We collect
billboards & loose

dimes. I see my dreams
in a county hospital ad, woman

wears healthy
from neck to face

stuck under power lines
incinerating the 405.

I rush to stop myself
from calling her martyr—

wonder if she was
a good patient

willing to lick
her sores

for extra life, how a stray cat
begs.

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Valerie Braylovskiy is a poet from the Bay Area and the author of Half-Life, a chapbook by Alien Buddha Press. As a Canterbury Scholar at Santa Clara University, she is currently developing a poetry manuscript that explores chronic illness and womanhood.