Chagrin River Review
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  • Issue 11 (Spring 2018)
    • Grace Campbell
    • Christopher Acker
    • Jennifer Porter
    • Wendy Scott
    • Jeremy Schnotala
    • Christopher Lilley
    • Karen Weyant
    • Mercedes Lawry
    • Paul Hostovsky
    • Johnnie Clemens May
    • T. J. McGuire

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Mercedes Lawry -- Poetry

Point of Departure

under the wet song of November
dark as a blood spot,
no hovering of wing, great
sacks of gray in the sky
as all fury at stolen hope
startles the last silence
of a world where language
has escaped, where shadows
lie against the ground
like small deaths,
the cry of a lone hawk
shears the crush of silence
like the intake of breath
at the point of departure



Curious Joys

Pardon the furniture arranged to perfection,
interior mirror of calculated space
with horizontal mimicking the serene
and vertical, an anchor of self in nothing.

Guarded, she steps and sits, lifts
and exhales, measuring her accountability.

How close are the floodwaters?
Wind at window and darkness on its way.

She will not wither or plead.
Place is how her soul endures, natural disasters
kept at arm’s length with a glib phrase.
Her own caustic journey seeps across the floor.

Marking shadows, she feels a gladness,
slow transformation of the pale greens
sufficient as the hours and her own instinct to inhabit.

Picture











​Mercedes Lawry 


Mercedes Lawry has published poetry in such journals as Poetry, Rhino, Nimrod, Poetry East, Seattle Review, and others.  She’s also published fiction and humor as well as stories and poems for children.  Among the honors she’s received are awards from the Seattle Arts Commission, Hugo House, and Artist Trust.  She’s been a Jack Straw Writer, held a residency at Hedgebrook and is a Pushcart Prize nominee.  Her chapbook, “There are Crows in My Blood”, was published by Pudding House Press in 2007 and another chapbook, “Happy Darkness,” was released by Finishing Line Press in 2011.  She lives in Seattle.

 




Use Your Words

Pause, end of pause.
Attempt at language.
Breathe shallow, breathe deep.
Disturbance, as if a page
had been torn from a book.
Ruthless, this theft
and those helping with the getaway,
those sentence demons
licking at the punctuation.
Take sound, swallow meaning.
Even if the rain is scribbling
at the window, the readers
will not look up.
Clues on the shelves,
string them together
and slip them into your bones.
Glean story from absence.
Word, no word, all words
in hazardous commotion.


A Small Bravery

The ragged wind stirs slightly.
No indication of the lost returned.
Words break apart, a uselessness of sound, then silence.
This too is the great death
mocking what we know.
Salt and roses, twigs and clay.
The headiness of a river down a mountain,
that cold water a force and loud.
What travels on the earth marks an absence.
We are elusive and might deserve forgiveness.
Whether we pause among the trees or continue
weeping into the morning.

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