Magenta

 

By Miles Liss

 

The sky’s an orange river in this city of thieves.
Gray or blue, the clouds trail overhead.


This is no doomsday scenario
even if the world is slowly fading.
Everything’s rich with life, except maybe us.


Try not to think too much—
just listen—a drop of honey.


The clouds are heavenly silent. They pick up
the magenta of the sun and carry it with them
like a command across the sky.

Miles Liss is the 2021 winner of the AWP Kurt Brown Prize in Poetry. A collection of his poetry and art is forthcoming from Death of Workers Whilst Building Skyscrapers Press at https://www.deathofworkerswhilstbuildingskyscrapers.com. He lives in Northern Virginia with his wife, the poet Zakia Ahmadzai.

 

The Barred Owl of Tree Hollow

 

By Janay Garrick

 

“You here for the owls?” the man flings open his Ford truck’s white door, his accent, southern. “Damn things. Up all hours of the night. Goddamn neighbor,” he points across the street at three old oak trees where them damn things live. “She puts out half a rotisserie chicken every night on her back deck. Keeps ‘em around.”

I, myself, am pleased with the goddamn neighbor, whoever she is. A Barred Owl baby above my head just now. Black-eyed, close-set, mottled gray peeping down at me. The baby moves her head elliptically right, then left. Clockwise then counterclockwise. She’s hip hop, she’s feather and flow—she’s got some bounce to her ounce. Delightful! How could anyone possibly call her, Damn Thing?

Baby Owl practices the short sprint, the fly-hop from oak to oak. She lands, at times, too close to a vertical branch and hasn’t the room to retract her wing. It’s clear: she’s no idea how long those things are, nor of what they are capable. Her wing scrapes the branch, she tilts left, tilts right, but does not fall. She wobble-walks, she side steps like a country-line dancer. Look at her feathered down! Her silver ballet skirt made of tulle.

From the family of Typical Owls, Barred Owl’s call is commonplace, a loud “who-cooks-for-you” most frequently heard at night. No wonder the man can’t sleep, Who-Cooks-For-You carrying on like she does—all night—like some 1960s, bra-burning feminist. I picture the man in the thralls of two a.m. pillow-plumping sleep, thrashing, kicking straight then jackknifing, then straight-as-a-board and cursing. Lots of cursing. This pleases me enormously. Barred Owl, she’s done her do. Sometimes birders say her call sounds like this: who-cooks-for-you-all. She’s real southern.

I strain my neck, tilting toward the treetops. It’s dusk dark. Where are the rest of them? I wonder. He said this was a family of seven. The no-see-ums pinch, yip, irritate. I swat, smack, ignore. They persist.

The Barred Owl is nocturnal. She hunts at night. When agitated, or defending her territory or her babies, she sounds like a French Bulldog. Her bark ascending, rising into a hoo-wah, loud and drawn out. This is a Big Old Deal. Ruckus raising. Her big, flat-faced, blunt-headed bark; her blunt-tongued, bar-breasted feathers in a ruffle. Do not invade her territory. She is revved up.

I look up to her.

Lightning’s heat has vaporized the water inside the oak tree, but the steam does not blow the trunk or the limbs apart. There, Barred Owl sets down wing and pulls up perch. She grafts herself into tree and limb, homemaking where wind has done its damage and lightning has flung its fiery tail. She is strong and resolute. She thinks outside the box, the bars, and barriers—what the oak tree calls disaster, Barred Owl calls home.

Janay Garrick writes from her grandmother’s pink secretary desk in Northern California. Influenced by the poetry of witness and resistance writing, Janay desires her art to speak back to the centers of power. Her work has appeared in Narrative, TriQuarterly, Eclectica, and Memoir Land among others. Connect with her: janaygarrick.com.

 

We Took It All

 

By Laura Rockhold

 

We went mid-morning, under a clear sky,

to walk and listen as we do in the woods.

 

First, we saw two trumpeter swans gliding on the lake,

holding themselves as sacred as their other, we said, loves for life.

 

In the marsh, we saw four great white egrets wading,

each on their own path.

 

And three garter snakes sunning

their creative sides in the tall, yellow grass.

 

We saw six bass spawning by the bridge, giving up

something they think they love, for something they really do love.

 

We saw one bald eagle ascending

from the lowest to the highest point.

 

And on the lake again, we saw two loons and their reflections

as still as reawakening dreams.

 

We started on the path for home, and took it all

as a sign of something good.

Laura Rockhold is a poet and visual artist living in Minnesota. She is the inventor of the golden root poetic form and 2022 recipient of the Bring Back The Prairies Award and Southern MN Poets Society Award. Find her at: www.laurarockhold.com.

 

Copper River

 

By Faith Allington

 

I wasn’t born here,

I still remember hours of gold

I traded for the pine-pitch

of forests, for basins

of rainfall and snowmelt.

 

This far north, the fog 

is furrow-tongued 

and the mountains hem 

the dusk into place. 

 

This far north, the blue silk 

of the Pacific Ocean 

turns grey with longing.

 

Each year the salmon return 

to the place they were born,

orienting themselves on stars,

magnetite in their bodies

calling them home.

 

I watch from the shore

and feel the ache of them 

fighting the currents

to find the heart of their longing,

emerging at the last 

into no recognizable form.

Faith Allington is a writer, gardener and lover of mystery parties who resides in Seattle. Her work is forthcoming or has previously appeared in various literary journals, including Crow & Cross Keys, The Fantastic Other, The Quarter(ly), Bowery Gothic and FERAL.

 

Slowly Lightening / Yavaş Yavaş Aydınlanan

 

by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, translated from the Turkish by Aysel K. Basci

 

From a mossy emptiness,

A slowly lightening

Underworld universe

Is pulling me to itself.

A star distance away,

Hazily and timidly,

Shapes dividing the time

Are awaking one by one.

 

Oh, crystal chandelier, lit instantly

By a single breath of silence!

In this mysterious trinity

The sky is getting closer to us.

 

The light's geometry

Is your garden of eternity.

Listen and you will hear

The voices of the beetles and the bees.

 

I know, no one can take

Successive drinks from the same fountain.

Every breath is like a farewell

From these familiar shores.


Against all odds,

Which dove’s wing

Built this palace

With its frothy flutter;

 

And which hand extended

This golden cup from an empty night,

As the days’ red fruit

Leaked from a thought?                                 

 

Oh, constantly changing things

At the doorstep of a moment!

This lightening is waiting to play                                                                              

At the bedside of every dream…

Yavaş yavaş aydınlanan

Bir deniz altı alemi,

Yosunlu bir boşluktan

Çekiyor kendine beni.

 

Bir yıldız uzaklığında

Uyanıyor birer birer

Ürkek bulanıklığında

Zamanı bölen şekiller.

 

Ey sükutun bir nefeste

Yaktığı billur avize!

Bu esrarlı müselleste

Gökler yakınlaştı bize...

 

Aydınlığın hendesesi

Sonsuzluk bahçendir senin;

Dinleyin geliyor sesi

Arılarla böceklerin!

 

Bilirim kimse içemez

Üst üste aynı pınardan,

Bir veda gibi her nefes

Alışılmış kıyılardan.

 

Hangi güvercin kanadı

Köpükten çırpınışında,

Bu sarayı tamamladı

Her tesadüfün dışında;

 

Ve hangi el boş geceden

Uzattı bu altın tası,

Sızdıkça bir düşünceden

Günlerin kızıl meyvası?

 

Ey eşiğinde bir ânın

Durmadan değişen şeyler!

Başucunda her rüyanın

Bu aydınlık oyun bekler…

Aysel K. Basci is a writer and literary translator. She was born and raised and Cyprus and moved to the United States in 1975. Her work has appeared in the Columbia Journal, Michigan Quarterly Review, Los Angeles Review, Adroit Journal, Aster(ix) Journal, Tint Journal, Bosphorus Review of Books and elsewhere.

Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar (1901-1962) was a Turkish poet, novelist, literary scholar and essayist, widely regarded as one of the most important representatives of modernism in Turkish literature. He was a professor of aesthetics, mythology and literature at the University of Istanbul. Although he died more than 60 years ago, his writing and poetry remains very popular. 

 

Seasonal Memory

 

By Paul Ilechko

 

So many of my memories

     are tied to a specific season

perhaps as simple as a trip to the grocery store

unshakably linked to the coldness

     of the weather as we walked from the car

the young maple trees already nude

 

or a late spring day at the hospital

a day of intermittent clouds and sun

an IV improperly inserted into a vein

clots of blood on the torn away dressing

an old man in the room next door

     is unconscious

barely covered by his sheet

     his naked legs exposed

     his panic finally quietened

 

there are steps leading down to the wide river

     that separates New Jersey from Pennsylvania

where a boat sits on the flickering flame of sunlit water

you will leave beneath the spreading flowers of spring

     and arrive as the last leaves fall yellow

the ripples from your passage

     taking such a long time to dissipate.

Paul Ilechko is a British American poet and occasional songwriter who lives with his partner in Lambertville, NJ. His work has appeared in many journals, including The Bennington Review, The Night Heron Barks, deLuge, Stirring, and The Inflectionist Review. He has also published several chapbooks. 

 

Suite for the Evening Herald

 

By Emily Murphy

 

“We saw a man eat pie for breakfast this morning.

Still, nothing happened.

Lots of unusual things occur and nothing happens.” The Evening Herald, Ottawa, Kansas, 9 June, 1904

 

1.

Pigeons lined the cornstalks again

fenceposts gray & wobbling in the breeze      late June & ragged lawn.

Clover came in thick last month          now dots

like the towering clouds           billow shade                 purple & pink blush

 

on spare trees & ripening fields & red-roof toyota

wedding ring tapping on driver's door

storm feathering the radio & rendered

in chorus crackling with scattered gravel.

 

Single plate of sheet glass in the sunglare like an icon

on brick like swollen fruit mounted & in the sweat

cool still air      carpet like piled wool—two footprints

down to floorboards molded   & compressor kicks to life

 

with ptang of gravel shot.         A few dozen smudges of gray & white

against dark clouds illumined like         shadows

stretched to asphalt shoulder grow deeper                  until

as though striking flint from a spent lighter

 

fireflies embellish the corn       dark as

wet earth on a warm night & there is no wind only

wake & watery music.              Some miles ahead

lightning & rainfall polish pine needles to emerald glow.

  

2.

where chainlink fence grew into an apple tree

the wind wedged wrappers into wire

            & what once was yellow now snaps

            the air              not quite still                only

                        live más & pottery jagged coyote cast rippling shade

 

scars like old footsteps polished away the grass

five summers now & still the level dirt

broken only by anthills & roots like a running river

Emily Murphy is a poet living and writing in Philadelphia. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Manzano Mountain Review, Inklette, and Garbanzo, as well as a very talented pigeon delivering hand-rolled poems to upper story apartments. You can follow her on Twitter @weightsandmeans.

 

Casting Forest Nets

 

By Laine Derr and Carolina Torres

 

Raised on plantains and fish

we knew our way through rocks.

 

Days by the river until our hearts

swelled, belts loaded with loss –

intestines thrown back to the blue.

 

Breakfast: scales picked from teeth,

soup washed wild swimming in skin.

 

Stealing awake, we leave tobacco

for Mohan, a night singer, limbs

like currents – strong, dangerous.

 

A long-haired god, like us, lifting

forbidden life, grinning spirit

casting forest nets, bounties tasting

of little ones raised on life, on death.

Laine Derr holds an MFA from Northern Arizona University and has published interviews with Carl Phillips, Ross Gay, Ted Kooser, and Robert Pinsky. Recent work has appeared or is forthcoming from Full Bleed + The Phillips Collection, ZYZZYVA, Portland Review, Chapter House, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere.

Carolina Torres is a Biologist and Public Health researcher who enjoys the arts and literature. As a scientific author, she has published in peer-reviewed journals within the biomedical field. Her writing, mostly prose, is a practice for spiritual reflection.

 

Todd from next door hoses off his boat,

 

By Carol Krauss

 

scrubs barnacles from the hull. Every Saturday from May to September

he hooks up the book trailer and heads out with his spaniel,

his girlfriend, and her daughter for a day of fishing and exploring

Virginia Beach tributaries, back bays. I watch him fill his cooler,

check the lifejackets, and pull out of his driveway.

Dad would wake us bright and early. Hurry down our dock

and ready the Chris Craft for skiing and exploring Lake Norman

coves, inlets. As a preteen, I spent many hours sitting

beside my Father, soaking up his sun. As I aged, I opted

for sleeping in or lengthy friend chats on the phone rather

than our Saturday ritual.

My father has been gone for three years now. When Todd

climbs up onto the bow of his boat, and waves to me,

I can see my Father waving as he pulls out of the cover.

Telling me goodbye years before he left.

Carol Parris Krauss was honored to be recognized as a Best New Poet by UVA. In 2021, Just a Spit Down the Road, was published by Kelsay. She has work in Louisiana Lit, One Art, Schuylkill Valley Journal, and Susurrus. she has been selected for Ghost City Press’ Micro-Chap Summer Series.

 

folding your laundry

 

By Brendan Walsh

 

if god is cruel, which they might be,

or god is merely the neutral arc

of the universe that bends towards

apathy, then the specific agony

of folding my laundry, piles & piles

of endless fabrics, makes cosmic

sense. but today, i fold your laundry,

left behind in the dryer on your way

out the door—let me not mention

the week we’ve had, both cars killed

in catastrophic flooding, two hours

trudging the waist-deep waters—,

the black pants which two nights ago

were soaked to the pockets with sewer

runoff, your pink pajamas which you wore

after our shower, before we collapsed

in the bed, our minds hurtling toward

the expensive, unknown future, little

socks which hug your little feet, silken

underwear, that cool afroed woman

graphic tee, her hair a bouquet of flowers;

i fold all of it. not once do i consider

the struggle, the devastation we own,

only that i love the things you wear.

Brendan Walsh has lived and taught in Laos, South Korea, and South Florida. He is the author of six poetry collections, including concussion fragment, winner of the 2022 Florida Book Award. He’s the cohost of Fat Guy, Jacked Guy, a podcast with Stef Rubino. He’s online at brendanwalshpoetry.com.

 

St. Andrews State Park, 1979

 

By Shelley Johansson

 

Old-school canvas tents scattered like children’s toys (don’t touch don’t touch in the rain, it’ll start to drip), smelling of oilcloth and dried leaves. A tarp my daddy rigged across the concrete picnic table, crisscrossing spider web of ropes draped with bathing suits and towels. Everything and everyone patched together improvised and coated with a light dusting of sand. We six cousins, three girls and three boys, slightly sunburned in a child’s paradise.

Cooler filled with cheap generic Chek sodas, ginger ale, cola, root beer, grape, orange (sure, you can have another one). Thick white goopy sunscreen (come here you’re getting red) on the soft white beach with the rhythm of the waves, riding the waves, do it again, salt in our eyes. Meeting the seagulls’ cold gaze. The unavoidable abrasive exfoliating grit of sand in everything, sunscreen sandwiches sleeping bags crunch crunch crunch (let me shake that out for you).

Flashlights flicking back and forth (turn that off, the battery will die). Insects in the bathhouses, moths swirling around the Coleman lanterns glowing with an ominous loud hiss. Possums sauntering through the campsite at night, raccoons in the garbage, salt breeze keeping the skeeters down. The firepit’s gentle crackles as flames like the wood (that’s enough s’mores, kids). Smoke making reality wavy, calling forth the monsters in the shadows, shadows everywhere, leaching from the branches of the long-needled pines.

We six cousins watched the monsters as they danced, safe in the warmth of the fire, our parents’ protection, our love for one another, safe in the ring of light we had created together.

We six cousins around the fire, innocent of the monsters we couldn’t see, the monsters yet to come, the monsters in ourselves that would have to be named, the monsters of the world we didn’t know.

Shelley Johansson lives, writes, and sews in western Pennsylvania. Her flash nonfiction has appeared in Pithead Chapel, the Prairie Schooner blog, Rejection Letters, Transformations, and Schuylkill Valley Journal Online, and her essay “Sewing Lessons” for Salvation South was an editor’s pick for Longreads. Twitter: @shelleyjohansso, or Instagram: @shelley_johansson.

 

Flathead Valley

 

By Angie O’neal

 

It’s not hard for me to believe

in things I can’t see.

In whatever tells

 

the beargrass it’s time to bloom.

That snowpack on the mountain,

the source from which

 

a river rises. This valley, where meltwater

rivers made a way through

mountains long ago.

 

Father, who died an old man,

they say I shouldn’t

                        mourn your long life.

 

But I still look for you in places

            you’ve been.

                         In headlights

 

bright as twin moons

            lighting up a dark road.

                        A map smoothed flat

 

across the kitchen table. The neon

needle in your transistor radio

            finding the right station.

 

In this world, you vanish—

            new moon, cirrus cloud, the end

                        of a straight Montana road.

 

But I see you like the river

trusts the way forward, scrambling

through rock toward open waters.

 

The way I see a poem before I

            find the right words.

 

How I know this valley is where

an ancient mountain

once stood. 

Angie Crea O'Neal’s poems have appeared in The Christian Century, the Cumberland River Review, Sycamore Review, among others. Her first full-length collection, This Persistent Gravity, was published by Finishing Line Press earlier this year. She teaches English at Shorter University in Rome, Georgia, where she lives with her teen daughters and three rescue dogs.

 

After the Lockdown: Dance Workshop

 

By Kathryn Kysar

 

We had not touched, seen faces up close

in fifteen months. We stand in a circle,

breathing in unison, our hands on each

other’s chests. Waves move through us.

In pairs, we open into each other’s eyes,

not the desperate online search for

meaning or message. Jose’s, deep brown,

tell of his journey north and north,

not forgotten or forlorn, just a bit sad.

We unfurl, like leaves, like the wind

in the birch. We ground our roots, lift

our legs high, point our fluttering arms.

Once, I was a dancer, tall and thin, stepping

to jazz on a worn wooden church floor,

no pews, only the worship of movement,

the chorus of bodies, my teenage

longing for expression, for connection.

Now we stand in a circle breathing,

our hands on our own expanding chests,

curating our internal dances, welcoming

our collective grief, our relief, our communion.

Kathryn Kysar is the author of two books of poetry, Dark Lake and Pretend the World, and editor of Riding Shotgun: Women Write about Their Mothers. Her work has recently appeared in Defunct, Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Mollyhouse, and Voicemail Poems. She lives on Dakota land near the Mississippi. 

 

My Sunday School teacher says that one day

 

By Gale Acuff

 

when I’m dead and in Heaven I’ll look back

on life and maybe this very moment

and laugh, which might be true because she adds

that we get all-new bodies yonder and

I guess laughter’s possible, I think

that in Heaven folks cry except for joy

and maybe down in Hell if they can laugh

then they laugh at their unhappiness but

I’m not sure and don’t know how to tell her

that I’ll be going to Hell when I die

and not the Good Place but at least I’ll learn

if I’m right and the tragedy will be

I can’t see my way back to tell people

the truth they’re dying to know. And they should.

Gale Acuff has had hundreds of poems published in a dozen countries and has authored three books of poetry. Gale has taught tertiary English courses in the US, PR China, and Palestine.

 

Meditation on Active Volcanoes

 

By Diana woodcock

 

Surely the pilgrim can feel it here,
heaven under one’s feet –
olivine and lava flows –
as well as over our heads,*
so many rainbows,


the presence and power of
active volcanoes – fire and
molten lava, each eruption
a passage, beauty of the earth
giving birth. In their presence,


one’s thoughts turn to spirit
and transendence, to downward
flow (lava) and rock uplift (the split
ground) – Earth still being
created, volcanoes signifying


the totality of nature’s process.
If one would look directly
into essential nature, let her
stare down into the caldera,
descend into a crater and hike


across a hardened lava lake,
then enter a cave into which lava
flowed five hundred years ago.
Finally climb to the top
of a cinder cone to see once


and for all how everything
eventually flows back into the sea,
and to consider that maybe
it wouldn’t be a tragedy –
wouldn’t be the worst way to go –


to be buried alive
under a lava flow,
becoming at last
all flame beneath
the fiery rain.

*Henry David Thoreau

Diana Woodcock has authored seven chapbooks and five poetry collections, most recently Holy Sparks (2020 Paraclete Press Poetry Award finalist) and Facing Aridity (2020 Prism Prize for Climate Literature finalist). Recipient of the 2022 Codhill Press Pauline Uchmanowicz Poetry Award, the 2011 Vernice Quebodeaux Pathways Poetry Prize for Women and three Pushcart Prize nominations, she teaches at VCUarts Qatar.

 

College Townie

 

By Andrew Zubiri

 

On my way on a Monday to the shuttle stop, the streets sound like a Sunday morning. Walking across the pedestrian stripes feels less threatening. On the sidewalk, I notice that my once long shadow has shrunk, playing peek-a-boo in and out of the studded shade on the ground. Trees puff their pollen. Are you following us on TikTok? The Jumbotron glares from the edge of the sports field facing the dormitories, asking no one in particular. The bus genuflects meekly and lets out a sigh of relief as the lone passenger gets onboard. The streetcar’s see-through belly slinks slightly slower. Today, its usual burdened whine is a happy hum. I’ve forgotten this treasure, the great urban emptying out, and rediscover it like a folded dollar bill in my jacket’s inside pocket. The revolving door of my building seems to resist my push, while the security almost ignores me as he waves me in. The bullpen, still dark, suddenly awakes. The hollowed-out hallways will remain so for the rest of the day, and the next weeks. But a final swarm will descend one weekend. From the bleachers, parents will watch hats fly on the field. A series of parties commence that I almost tolerate. A last hurrah followed by a fallow. A sustained rest from the cacophony. Hushed months of this city's siesta.

Andrew Zubiri is a Filipino writer whose essays have appeared in AGNI, Consequence, Atticus Review, and are forthcoming in Ninth Letter, World Literature Today, and The Threepenny Review. His writing explores identity and the tension between home and diaspora. A former global development professional, he now works in educational technology and lives in Boston.

 

Azovstal

 

By Tatiana Retivov

 

Disassociation begins

While you are negotiating

The roadblocks, you hover

As if above yourself

Flinching as cruise

Missiles interfere with

Your train of thought.

The road curves out

Of view, the emergency

Lane on the right is full

Of abandoned cars.

Do not stop, don’t

Look back, be not

Like Lot’s wife or

Euridyce. There is

No going back.

Or is there? You are under

The influence of a fugue,

One day all is well and

then cruise missiles fly

overhead crosshatching

the abandoned fields.

Tatiana Retivov received a B.A. in English Literature from the University of Montana and an M.A. in Slavic Languages and Literature from the University of Michihgan She has lived in Kyiv, Ukraine since 1994, where she runs an Art & Literature Salon and a small publishing press that publishes prose, poetry, and non-fiction in Ukraine

 

deep, deep sea

 

Image of the open deep sea

By Prosper C. Ìféányí

 

they are amputating the heads

of small trees & putting them

in small polythene bags. a truck

 

comes to get them at night

because that is the

best season for anomy. i see

 

men working in oil fields

or serving in the army—

chest propped into small coffins

 

& unanimated dolls. they

voyage the bottom sea with these

many heads in guise of trout

 

fishing; if the sea wasn't

so half-asleep, it would have

gifted them a home in the wrapping

 

of a blustery wind. the sun comes

clean to the window skeined

by the willow tree. sunstroke

 

ensconced on the eye of beholder.

dogs paddling in circles

for the return of their masters

 

the sea brings them home

in little gulps: boots first,

axe, then gunpowder, smoke pipes

 

bottleneck guitars, & blue sacks

of bodies. & they say

nature doesn't fight for its own.

Prosper C. Ìféányí writes from Nigeria. His works are featured or forthcoming in The Offing, The Westchester Review, Black Warrior Review, Salt Hill, Magma Poetry, The Fourth River, New Note Poetry Anthology, and elsewhere. His debut micro-chapbook, Sermon (Ghost City Press), appears in 2023. He has a B.A in English and Literary Studies from Delta State University.

 

Bloom

 

By Lauren Elaine Jeter

 

Everything was red once—

your bra propped behind the backseat, liquor

 

mixed into wine, poppies breathing out from the graves

that you’ve laid with your past, killing your demons

 

for your darling (and the pool of you that they pulled

him from one evening in May). New mother,

 

I was there, saw your skin unstitched, umbilical cord knitting

you to your son as they unraveled him from your body.

 

New mother, I’ll paint a picture of crape myrtle petals

raining around you. This is not to say all is clear air

 

and sunshine—I know that you are both stamen and pistil:

tired mother, tired father. But you are standing nectar-rich

 

and sure. New mother takes me to the lake in summer

the day before I marry. (Ophelia, last time you gathered a bouquet,

 

I feared your fate in water, but we are the third generation

to stand in this place and raise our arms

 

toward the water and the world—my grandfather brought

his children here.) New mother, we are knit into the strata

 

of this town. New mother, we are soulknit, tethered

to the strata of each other; I’ll swallow this Texas dirt with you

 

in a strange covenant if that’s what you need, best friend fearing

my move across the country (we get matching tattoos instead).

 

Best friend, there is nothing to fear now—your son is budding,

and you are every garden full, every butterfly flitting in. (Gardens

 

are more ancient than marriage or man.) You’ve already taught me

what it means to stay. I am every moth at your door.

Lauren Elaine Jeter has a BFA in Creative Writing from Stephen F. Austin State University. Her poems have appeared in Rust + Moth, San Pedro River Review, Crab Creek Review, the museum of americana, and elsewhere. She lives in the coastlands of North Carolina with her husband and chocolate lab.