Alaska Girlhood
April 4, 2018Eden was a winter when gods skated the earth. They’d warm themselves by the fires that lit the man-high snowbanks
Eden was a winter when gods skated the earth. They’d warm themselves by the fires that lit the man-high snowbanks
Halfway between here and Oregon, the Lighthouse Bookstore opens along some residential street we browse unwittingly when reading after dark, where the words and road signs blur and the sky clouds up and thunders.
At dusk, the pool waits in silence, found by your feet after you rip up the map. Suddenly in the tangled grasses and twilight the birds stop calling, and the trees finger your face.
Like a storm rowing in. All around tree limbs stagger, weeds lie flat. Wind and sun like familiars, canyons nesting in the shadows. Bright feet never touching down, while the air boils behind her
[…] That’s how pregnancy is, ordinary things move on without you whispers move inside that teach from another world where birthday candles last on and grandmothers’ hugs fold you inward so close you are the […]
I. The coming Inside this precise granite the immensity of the walk comes home
Again, that rim before sleep: I tried to pause there—listened to the mantle clock, the distant sprung rhythm of a dog barking,
—Or on summer evenings as the sky Draws down its light, prodding the question why They sit in cast-off wicker furniture, The kids cross-legged as though the lawn made a shore
The only motion here is an old Dodge pickup leading a coil of white exhaust across the horizon—a snow-dusted
[…] in subtle violets above rough beds of redwood bark and waive all rights to springtime’s soft ascent—accept the harsh descent of life implicit-cradling death. And so you raise your lonely sheath and bloom a […]