by Emily MacGriff
I saw water music whomping women women wearing leaves and their hair breathing in baritone stretches of precipitate I shook the waves – rubber and rudder pointed in from the surf wanting to call back in stomp, brush, slap scoop, smack gulp, spray, gasp wanting an answer swish, smash, sing sway, say something, just arms leaf head leaves breast bottom belly leaves the strings of music in the empty bits of me, my history and feet be silent, it’s all the engine drop, rain, my own chest’s cascade it’s all the chimes I cry, and cloud. Emily’s work pulls largely from her experience working aboard expedition ships as a marine biologist/wilderness guide in the polar regions, South Pacific and British Isles. She is mostly retired from shipbound work and focused on navigating life as a woman, artist and mother. She’s based in Detroit and received an MFAW from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2022.
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by B. J. Buckley
Moon splintered bone, each cloud a torn and dirty winding sheet, a shroud for stars. This is what the world is: killing to stay alive: wasp and caterpillar, fox and vole, the aging lynx in one last leap to the back of a panicked deer, clawing for its neck, for red, for warm, the beautiful simplicity of blood beyond which nothing has any meaning, bear chewing through flesh and sinew to free itself from a trap. There’s always a knife at the throat of love, some desperate hunger, wolf devouring its heart to save its heart. B. J. Buckley is a Montana poet and writer who has worked in Arts-in-Schools and Communities programs throughout the West and Midwest for more than four decades. Her recent work appears in Grub Street, Hole in the Head Review, About Place Journal, Dogwood, and Calyx. |
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May 2024
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