Ruined Ghazal

only a girl gets ruined
prom dress soaked

updo down. hideous
ruin, head full of murder.

bones under skin already in ruin
starved thin, blood without oxygen

heart beating only from habit
red ruin

boys make their way by ruin
snake-like belts, hooded eyes, chapped

fingers finding skin
girls’ ruin lies in others’ hands

behold this ruin—frosted with rage
riddled with ugly, baked too long in the sun

wet ruins down her face
dumb girl in a dress racked

with ruin. who is she fooling?
all roads lead to ruin

she made her way by ruin
anne dyer sought her ruin in a thousand ways.

Author of the article

Anne Dyer Stuart holds an MFA from Columbia University and a PhD from the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi. Her lyric nonfiction won New South journal’s 2012 prose prize, and her fiction received the Henfield/Transatlantic Prize from the Joseph F. McCrindle Foundation. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Pembroke Magazine, Poet Lore, The Louisville Review, The Midwest Quarterly, Sakura Review, Third Coast, Best of the Web, storySouth and elsewhere. She teaches at Bloomsburg University in Pennsylvania.