Isabelle Doyle
Winter 2026 | Poetry
Proverb
Can you do something with this? I don’t know what to do.
Life is so hum-drum. I contract Silly Bitch Syndrome.
I’m just a candy Annie Oakley blowing candy smoke
from a candy gun with real razors in my pockets.
I throw all the raffle tickets in the air. I throw
a nickel in a dark pond and make a silly bitch wish.
I take a fast train at night and am like This is
where a muse would meet up with someone, right?
I’m trying to wake up, America! I feel like
I’ve been asleep for longer than I’ve been alive.
I’m just like Norah Jones in that I don’t know why.
I cry throughout the entirety of The Incredibles 2
in theaters. You really want me to go to therapy.
I want you to look ugly in a dressing room mirror.
I want to gather up the raffle tickets from the lobby
and throw them in the dark pond, try to correct the spell.
I also want to trample you with the thousand horses
I am leading to poisoned water they will kneel and drink.
I know better than even you the moment you start
to suspect I’m bad luck. I know better. But I try not to.
Isabelle Doyle is a writer and educator pursuing her PhD in English & Literary Arts at the University of Denver, where she is a poetry editor for Denver Quarterly. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in River Heron Review, Academy of American Poets, Los Angeles Review, Typo Magazine, Jersey Devil Press, The Madison Review, The Chiron Review, Hole in the Head Review, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from the University of Alabama and has published chapbooks with Ghost City Press and Jacar Press.