Poetry by Rowan Evans

They call me, Edgar Allan,
the way I write these POEms—
every line a candle flickering,
every stanza a raven’s cry.
Nevermore will I deny
that shadows are the ink in my veins,
turning quills to mourning doves.

And I’m on the same path as Plath,
breathing in metaphors like oven smoke,
watch me, watch me—
burn in the bell jar’s glow.
Not a rebirth, not a requiem,
just a girl with matches for fingers,
striking sparks against the dark.

Anne whispers, “Live or die,
but don’t poison everything.”
So I lace my lines with both—
venom and virtue, cyanide kisses,
verses that bite like wolf teeth,
howling at a moon they cannot reach.

Emily sends dashes through my veins,
every pause a breathless gasp—
death tapping politely at my door,
but I write back, Not today.
She pens silence like a lover’s touch,
so I send echoes in return.

And Sappho—oh, sweet firebrand,
your words press soft as rose petals
against my lips,
a love letter centuries late.
Still, I fold your longing into my own,
write it into the margins of history,
ink pressed to skin like a lover’s mark.

I do not write to become them,
but because they hum beneath my ribs—
this inheritance of ink and sorrow,
of passion, of madness, of light.
But my voice—
my voice is stitched from their ghosts,
a haunting all my own.

So here I stand,
pen in hand,
spilling verses into the void—
part phantom, part fire,
wholly alive.