The "Sky Above Clouds" Just Looks Like the Sea

 

by Jamie Benner, After Georgia O’Keeffe

 

All lines are liminal

at rest on the horizon.

The sienna sky

leaves glaciers

like neighbors

dissociative expanses

cuffed in unfamiliar hues.

A ship’s corpse sinks

just out of sight.

Beneath, slip shapes

of pitch—

a mother, a calf, a sea

filled with strangers,

faced with a choice:

to splinter or stay.


Jamie Logan Benner holds a PhD in English from the University of Southern Mississippi and works at Acadian House Publishing. She previously served as Managing Editor at The Pinch, Product, and BreakBread magazines and Associate Editor at Mississippi Review. Her writing appears in Prairie Schooner, New Ohio Review, Barrelhouse, and elsewhere.