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Picture"Nevermore" by Meggie Royer


Prairie Ledger


Downburst


He’s thumbing
the flint wheel,

hot as a wind
turbine as it  fast

tracks down
the lighter’s grip

hold. His finger’s
over the carb

we gauge into
the bruised

Gala we scrape
and mine until

what’s saved
for this gust front

bathes the long-gone
core with smolder.

I watch him lip
the wet entropic

flesh—peel flaring
at the locus

of ignition, his lungs
wind shearing

smoke that haloes
his hair. I wait

for dusk to graffiti
the window’s

sun-split laths,
for when he’s ashing

into the chartreuse
gorge of his Stella

Artois, soot veiling
the blonde froth.



Squall Lines

My body’s swathed
over the washing

machine, its tinted
steel hewed

and tarnished.
Rinse cycle

and this one’s
taking pictures,

both of us rain-
blitzed, my skirt

tangled in his palms,
panties crushed

around one ankle.
The machine

plunges
through another

grinding cycle, 
pressure flooding 

the poloidal axis,
and it’s gravity

lashing our bodies,
not the water.



Graupel

I-29, the crash
nearly lethal.

I can’t recall
his name now,

just that he clenched
my throat when

ice ended us,
his thumbs dovetailing

my larynx.
That’s all I was

to him—to anyone--
swan tracing

the radius
of his body’s tempest.

Swan garroted
by winter’s slipknot.



Polar Vortex

In the Jacuzzi
suite, I strip

until I’m wilting
injured scallops,

jets thrusting
a shattered

turgor pressure,
the No Vacancy

neon tattooing
my back.

He turns to gust.
I weave our surges

between thumb
and forefinger,

urge the plume
ribbed and slick

into one more
vortex as it loiters

beside us, ghosting
the water.


Sara Henning is the author of A Sweeter Water (Lavender Ink, 2013), as well as two chapbooks, Garden Effigies (Dancing Girl Press, 2015) and To Speak of Dahlias (Finishing Line Press, 2012).  Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in such journals as Crazyhorse, Quarterly West, Green Mountains Review, Crab Orchard Review, and RHINO. Winner of the 2015 Lynda Hull Memorial Poetry Prize, she is currently a doctoral student in English and Creative Writing at the University of South Dakota, where she serves as Assistant Managing Editor for the South Dakota Review and as associate editor at Sundress Publications.

Meggie Royer is a writer and photographer living in Minnesota who is currently majoring in Psychology at Macalester College. Her poems have previously appeared in Words Dance Magazine, Winter Tangerine Review, Electric Cereal, and more. In March 2013 she won a National Gold Medal for her poetry collection and a National Silver Medal for her writing portfolio in the 2013 National Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. Her work can be found at writingsforwinter.tumblr.com.
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