I wear a silken flower on my shoulder,
An orchid made of velvet and of lace,
Because a hard wind, driving through my garden,
Of its carousals left relentless trace
In broken stems and darkened leaves. This autumn
I wear a silken flower in their place.

My marble god lies broken in the garden,
But I will patch him till he looks like new,
So people will not guess that he is shattered,
A lifeless Eros made of stone and glue.
And since I’ve learned to patch, you needn’t love me
If but for a while you will pretend you do.

by Margaret Rucker, unpublished during her life (1907-1959). Her scrapbook was rescued from a garbage bin by Chicken John Rinaldi, and some of her works were published in a book and concept album about her by Jason Webley and friends in 2014.

Her mind lives in a quiet room,
A narrow room, and tall,
With pretty lamps to quench the gloom
And mottoes on the wall.

There all the things are waxen neat
And set in decorous lines;
And there are posies, round and sweet,
And little, straightened vines.

Her mind lives tidily, apart
From cold and noise and pain,
And bolts the door against her heart,
Out wailing in the rain.

by Dorothy Parker, first published in 1926