Isabelle Doyle
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Fire in the Butterfly Sanctuary

The wasteland piles sand in an unfurnished waiting room,
clinic ceiling torn off. The sick cat falters in the winter
garden, paw curled around the corner of an iron armchair.

I’ve seen a lot of smoke where nothing is burning,
found feathers in places where birds won’t go.
The dead cat stiffens in the icy garden.

I realize I’m saying I’m sorry. I’m sorry. You say
This is a bad idea. I think my life would be different
if I could make me forget you. When you slap me

I think there’s a lot I could lecture you about. I scoop
the dead hard cat in the garden into a white garbage bag
and I scoop the garden into a white garbage bag

and I say I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry
you were a sick cat and you lived outside.
I’m sorry for the white gunk in your sick eyes.

I want to climb Mount Julep and cry all over it.
I want to never have sex again. You say Look
honey, the sky is full of smokejumpers.

You tilt my chin toward the window.
You put me up on the counter and ask me
if I feel like my life is just beginning.

I turn to look at you through several hundred panes of glass
and see a several-hundred-handed thing. The planet
has trillions of eyes all blinking at once.

I see a little devil making horns in the waiting room.
I ask him if he will grow up to be a big devil.
He says Unless someone stops me!

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Isabelle Doyle is a Graduate Council Fellow and Truman Capote Literary Scholar at the University of Alabama. Her poems, stories, and chapbooks have been published by Poets.org, The Los Angeles Review, Typo Magazine, Jersey Devil Press, Bending Genres, The West Review, Ghost Parachute, The Chiron Review, DIALOGIST, Jacar Press, and elsewhere. She received the 2023 Academy of American Poets University & College Poetry Prize at the University of Alabama, first place in the 2023 Elizabeth Meese Prize in Creative Nonfiction, third place in the 2023 Jerome K. Phipps Prize in poetry, three Pushcart Prize nominations, a Best of the Net nomination, a Best Microfiction nomination, and a Best Small Fictions nomination.