Image by John Kazior

Poetry Tivoli

Ashley D. Escobar

Tulips waiting
to bloom
in schoolyards.

Children
in wellies

stomp

the alphabet
into the street.

Streetlamps
bend over, I
am not yet a trampoline.

I’m pining
for a soon-to-be
stepmother of three.

Her
reflection meets mine

in a stale
puddle of milk.

All the town’s
clocks died.

I missed
every train;

trains shouldn’t
arrive
on the same track.

I’ll eat
away her guilt.

I fought
in a war

I let her win.

Ashley D. Escobar is a writer and filmmaker from San Francisco, residing in New York City. Eileen Myles selected her debut poetry collection, GLIB (2025), as the Changes Book Prize winner. Her work has appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, Hobart, and The London Magazine, among others.