Back to Issue 11

Mercedes Lawry

Navigating the Collapse

Out and about, we’re quick with a fresh
hello, as if our souls were circling
with hope and lush, red blooms.

Too late for regret, we’re over the falls,
along with polar bears, Arctic foxes
and the tigers of Cambodia.

Our hands are tattlers,
the wind a spare excuse. We make
and dismantle fences, fears and rickety love.

How do we explain our tongues
complicit with silence, our thieves’ breath,
the unearthly commotion of species
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decline? All the while the spindled tree sweeps
the evening sky as if night was holy
and the wild creatures safe beneath an alluvial moon.
 

​Mercedes Lawry has published poetry in such journals as Poetry, Nimrod, Prairie Schooner, and Harpur Palate. Thrice-nominated for a Pushcart Prize, she’s published two chapbooks. Her manuscript “Small Measures” was selected for the Vachel Lindsay Poetry Prize from Twelve Winters Press and will be published in 2018. She was a finalist for the 2017 Airlie Press Prize and the 2017 Wheelbarrow Press Book Prize. She’s also published short fiction, essays as well as stories and poems for children. She lives in Seattle.

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