"Macvie Family" by Amanda Pomeroy
I Say My Morning Prayer by the Ocean by Ashley Mares
And then I become rooted:
soaked into a place
in which I’m always returning.
What exactly is it
that keeps our body walking
towards this realm:
this intimate assemblage of
spirits – with their sutured
bones and answered prayers.
How the Lord responds,
lean in – and I know:
there is something at work
in my body – with my bitten
skin and wounded
wings: eyes like the salty sea.
As a child I believed
the pinkened coral sprawled in
the sand were mermaid
bones. Because bones trap our
dreams, I’d carry them
in my pocket. Because when
something beautiful
dies, your bones learn: there is no
hiding from suffering.
In the early, misty mornings I held
these delicate bones
in my palm. Because what body
can be held within
the warmth of another’s
and still grieve.
soaked into a place
in which I’m always returning.
What exactly is it
that keeps our body walking
towards this realm:
this intimate assemblage of
spirits – with their sutured
bones and answered prayers.
How the Lord responds,
lean in – and I know:
there is something at work
in my body – with my bitten
skin and wounded
wings: eyes like the salty sea.
As a child I believed
the pinkened coral sprawled in
the sand were mermaid
bones. Because bones trap our
dreams, I’d carry them
in my pocket. Because when
something beautiful
dies, your bones learn: there is no
hiding from suffering.
In the early, misty mornings I held
these delicate bones
in my palm. Because what body
can be held within
the warmth of another’s
and still grieve.
Ashley Mares has poetry that has appeared or is forthcoming in Menacing Hedge, Rogue Agent, Hermeneutic Chaos, Whiskey Island, White Stag, and others. She is currently completing her J.D. in Monterey, Ca, where she lives with her husband. Read more of her poetry at ashleymarespoetry.wordpress.com and follow her @ash_mares2.
Amanda Pomeroy is a self-taught artist, a lover of life and beauty, and a connoisseur of all things unconventional. She is currently spending her days on a start-up business in Hoquiam, WA; an art gallery called Renegade Red, which is scheduled to open in the Spring of 2017. She earned her bachelor’s degree in Environment and Society at the University of Alaska, Anchorage, where she lived for 15 years before returning to her home in Washington state in 2014. Biology and Environmental Science have always been a passion for her, and she hopes to one day incorporate her love of science into art. Two of her paintings hint at this aspiration, featuring bees alongside women, as an intimation of the crisis surrounding bee populations and the direct correlation to humans, both in cause and consequence. She believes, with conviction, that humans are symbiotes of the Earth, and that, individually, we hold no more grandeur than the tiny bee; albeit, just as essential.
