Bridget Lowe
Winter 2026 | Poetry
Absence of Witness
Don’t be ashamed. I already know it all.
You had a will. It was just trying to survive.
It hid its face in its own shirt. It made a
big mess, inside itself. So technically it
didn’t spill. It didn’t eat. It ate itself. It
dressed up in private hours. It put a scarf
inside its mouth then pulled it out real
slow. After school it talked to itself. It held
a little vanity mirror up close to its eye. I
saw it all. Those were the old days. Behold,
the annals of time. She tried to beat it out
of you with a hairbrush. That only made it
stand straight up, stiffen. It grew a dignity,
like a tail, that it dragged around her house.
Brief Autobiography
Look now, long ago I was unburdened
of the herd. I was already not one of them
which meant I was dangerous, which
meant I could be whatever I want.
Can you imagine? So it was better to let
me wander off, a contaminant with a crooked
mind, than try to contain me, to splint
my mood then and there, on the field.
The truth is the truth and the truth is
there was no barn. Though there was brute
dumb animal craving. I had to tend to it,
I had to shove the fat carrots through
the slats. So I know it was real. I had to deal
with him myself, coming around at dusk
without eyes in his head. I was innocent. I was
innocent as the ponies with their chins up,
running a circle in his bad yard. Which
made me confusing, which made me easier
to kill. At least the first time, before I
knew it wasn’t the last time, before I knew
it would become this little story called my life.
Bridget Lowe is the author of the poetry collections My Second Work and At the Autopsy of Vaslav Nijinsky, both from Carnegie Mellon University Press. Her poems have appeared widely in publications including The New Yorker, Poetry, American Poetry Review, Best American Poetry, The New Republic, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. Her honors include the Emily Dickinson Award from the Poetry Society of America, the Discovery Prize from the 92NY, the Oran Robert Perry Burke Award for Poetry from the Southern Review, and fellowships to MacDowell. She lives in Kansas City, where she was born.