A tendon of faith and escape
my handwriting is all over these woods
sometimes when I’m alone I go outside with my big little mouth
I know that word’s not meant for me but I collect words.
What I took for petals
were scars. What I thought
you already know it’s prayer
between the wing blades of pigeons, written in the tiniest script
she told me something, I want to say, about loneliness.
To read a body is to break that body a little.
Your body of work is other people’s bodies
your words are a cradle of light.
How do you tell a ghost that it’s already dead, that its body is a
fairy tale you stopped reading a long time ago?
Maybe you’re right: let us stop explaining
O teaselburr and grasshopper—how you catch in the hem of my skirt
the animals moved as secretly as blood
I couldn’t wish time in any direction but rewind
Sometimes I write a letter of resignation to the universe
to a place where the next field is the memory of a field
of stars in the dwindling light
not even the drunkest ghost will stop to tie his shoes on them.
Someone sang for me and no one else could hear it
but how does the deer know who I am, or the rabbit, or the clouds?
Autumn’s when the bruises show
tiny buds sprout from my shoulders
so many shriek-mouthed blooms.
You’re blood-dull and falling apart. You’re about to split.
For all of it: the almost, the thing expelled. I walked
drawn by the snow-shallow deck of the earth, the iced trees
now my routines are like veins
the memory that grew here first
escaped wandering the wilderness
the wood is long and tall: it’s shot with light
we are always ready for the breaking.
Theory of Birds by Zaina Alsous1 Goldenrod by Maggie Smith2 Human Hours by Catherine Barnett3 If They Come for Us by Fatimah Asghar4 White Blood by Kiki Petrosino5 Says the Forest to the Girl by Sally Rosen Kindred6 Aviaries by Yvonne C. Murphy7 Kontemporary American Poetry by John Murillo8 Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz9 28,065 Nights by Katie Manning10 Where the Wolf by Sally Rosen Kindred11 This Wound is a World by Billy-Ray Belcourt12 Lace & Pyrite by Ross Gay13 Lace & Pyrite by Aimee Nezhukumatathil14 A Kinship with Ash by Heather Swan15 I was Waiting to See What you Would do First by Angie Mazakis16 Sad Math by Sarah Freligh17 Hinge by Molly Spencer18 Eternal Sentences by Michael McGriff19 An American Sunrise by Joy Harjo20 The Age of Discovery by Alan Michael Parker21 Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl by Dianne Seuss22 What Feeds Us by Diane Lockward23 Falling Awake by Alice Oswald24 What Happened Was by Anna Leahy25 What Nothing by Anna Meister26 Epistle Osprey by Geri Doran27 Feeding Hour by Jessica Gigot28 Engraved by Anna George Meek29 Ordinary Beast by Nicole Sealey30 Kill Class by Nomi Stone31 The Burning Where Breath Used to Be by Jen Karetnick32
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Kindra McDonald is the author of the collections Teaching a Wild Thing, Fossils, and In the Meat Years. She received her MFA from Queens University of Charlotte and is a poet-artist working and teaching in mixed-media and found poetry. You can find her in the woods or at www.kindramcdonald.com
