by Beth Gordon

china cupboard mouse/attic mockingbird

the changing light ignored/the nearest star swallowed/the furthest star impaled/

(confront the damage/explain the riverbed)

Wednesday/Wednesday/Wednesday/Wednesday/always broken sky/

the broken lake/the broken door/beneath the painter’s eyelid/the blooming broken field/

(refold the messy map/discard the oracle)

broken mirror/black cat shadow/ice stained driveway/

the impatient starfish strayed out of the garden/and into the belly of the whale/

Beth Gordon is a poet, mother and grandmother currently living in Asheville, NC. Her poetry has been published in Passages North, RHINO, EcoTheo Review, Into the Void, Pidgeonholes, SWWIM, Pithead Chapel, and others. Her full-length poetry collection, This Small Machine of Prayer, is forthcoming from Kelsay Books in July 2021 and her chapbook, The Water Cycle, is forthcoming from Variant Literature in November 2021. She is Managing Editor of Feral: A Journal of Poetry and Art, Assistant Editor of Animal Heart Press, and Grandma of Femme Salve Books.