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"Growth" by Julia Forrest

Cryptid Poem by A.D. Lauren-Abunassar

                                                                                                               "The body must be heard.” — Helene Cixous

here comes hearsay: after bluebird; heresy after pines bow down to —
thunder happens; this is hardly feasible sustenance, soundscape so
capable of turning its own bed down — blood: blue & begging,
relinquish, release, ready redness for dripping; light into ligature, moon
into muscle — this strange wildness, that girl, bringing water to foxes —
the space between fingers; the space between fingers pointing — skin
thin & hardly becoming — drinks every river she swims in, blood part
tributary; how soft her earlobes & traceable spine — the German word
for poison is the English word for gift — the word for forgiveness is the
sound for outrunning — her horse-dream: starving & girl dream: bodied
not — horse is to girl as love is to wolf — her exile; her snow-pocked
woods, new wet like white moon — season of doing — morning of
listing; things to get away with: — orison to oracle & orator to orbit or
else she forgets her own losing; or else she goes elsewhere — skinned
open as a door — skin is to branch: pruned; woods so like habits: she
grows into them — the night is when trees grow their tallest; there is
sound for this also, her bones ricked & calling — the word for this call is
the place to go next — a plum blooms come nightfall — she walks into
this sacrifice


A.D. Lauren-Abunassar is an Arab-American writer who resides in Pennsylvania. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Moth, Zone 3, Cincinnati Review, Diode, Comstock Review, Berkeley Poetry Review, and elsewhere. She was the recipient of the 2017 Zone 3 Annual Poetry award, a 2019 Frost Chapbook Prize semi-finalist, and was a 2017 fellow at the Bucknell Seminar for Young Poets. She was a nominee for the 2018 Best New Poets Anthology. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop.  

​​​Julia Forrest is a Brooklyn based artist. She works strictly in film and prints in a darkroom she built within her apartment. Her own art has always been her top priority in life and in this digital world, she will continue to work with old processing. Anything can simply be done in photoshop, she prefers to take the camera, a tool of showing reality, and experiment with what she can do in front of the lens. Julia is currently working as a teaching artist at the Brooklyn Museum, Medgar Evers College, USDAN Art Center and Lehigh University. As an instructor, she thinks it is important to understand that a person can constantly stretch and push the boundaries of their ideas with whatever medium of art they choose. Her goal is for her audience to not only enjoy learning about photography, but to see the world in an entirely new way and continue to develop a future interest in the arts.  You can find her at her WEBSITE and on instagram: @Juliajuliaajuliaa
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