Love, our bodies
are marsh water,
a lullaby of cows
sprawled raw
in the noon heat.
Clay-flung, near dusk,
a yellowhammer’s preface—
five notes before the long
last note. Cahaba lilies sprouted
in the river’s wash. Broken
fence posts and tangled
wire. Muslin mists rising
from the first swelling
slope of cotton rows.
A buried red milk snake.
Chinaberry. Bamboo.
Dark syrup crusting
vine-roped sweet gums.
Hedgerow, hemlock,
greenwich butterflies
sunk like pale apple
leaves in a sun-kicked
field. Love, happens
this way—a torn open
roof, taste of marmalade,
a stringer of crappie,
blooming wild hyacinth,
the sheen of pine sap
and a washboard road
through a swamp-like hollow.
received her MFA in poetry from Southern Illinois University-Carbondale and her
undergraduate degree in English from the University of Alabama-Birmingham. She
won the 2015 Everett Southwest Literary Award, the 2010 AWP Intro Journal Award
for her poem “Wet Field,” and has received two Honorable Mentions
from the Academy of American Poets Prize for her poems “Into the Damp
Woods” and “Drought.”
Her poems have appeared in Passages North, Cream City Review, Fifth Wednesday,
Hayden’s Ferry Review, New Madrid, Naugatuck River Review, Southern Indiana
Review, Crab Orchard Review, and Sou’wester.
