I START OUT plumpa pearthick skinned and hardly ripe but then with each hourthe skinis worn inand my love is worn down I rattle with bonesI open my mouthand it rings like an unkept bell First too softand thentoo loud SARAH currently lives and works in Edmonds, Washington. She would describe herself as painfully shy…
the first morning we ate crackers and canned peaches with protein powder as the sun rose past the scrub brush trees and the missile silo doors and I imagined the doors flung wide to spend a dozen Titan AE-1s at our foes, real and imagined, while the boys around me chattered like the apocalypse was…
I go about my days as I would have done them as if nothing was promised as if nothing would change I’d hate to disrupt the peace of things that would not have me back I’d hate to be given what is not suited for me …
I go out into the morning, I try not to tune the feeling too much. If I can make one line that is true, it is enough. Just before I had spent hours trying to be important and what a waste it was. My work looking up in state of permission asking, “Is it good enough…
the second bedroom downstairs you can have the second bedroom downstairs move in your boxes and don’t mind how the crows will scream at the glory of another sunrise every damn day just – put away your books and focus on the light come dappled through the trees and above you my soft footsteps,…
History prepares me To welcome the Monster at my gate To treat him kindly To not look away No matter how gruesome He appears to me How rudely he barges in Uninvited and yet Not totally unexpected Though I shunned him overwhelmingly After…
Move for me So I can remember what it feels like To be lighter than air and so___ Very sure of limb Move for me In ways my body remembers as if It were today When you hold gravity to task I am fearless once more & Free Resist! These universal laws As ever long…
Time races by Like a child Run amok Splashing at puddles Wishing for luck I anticipate Cells slowing As they will Urgency and dread builds Then dissipates I search for breath and breadth To fill me With presence and peace Not so pressingly Now As I am…
I wonder what it takes To ride the Tilt-o-Whirl from one inch below the line. A new set of boots? A fast fiver? A diversion? A boost so sly That a fluff of puffy hair Or solid boot heels Could mean the difference between Seeing the world And not being quite good enough Or are…
You are the hero of your own BRAVE life. You may think you have failed. But no. Your supposed failures are, in truth, the little horrors you subject yourself to in order to see more clearly, the heroic failures of others and of yourself, so that you may be able to accept them graciously for…
Remember what it was like before you became Roommates with responsibilities Brother and sister Bickering under your breath We can hear you We can see you We hurt for you And we always LoVe You I think if you touch one another In more ways than one Physically, emotionally and spiritually (LoVe is…
It was not old, as trees count years, when it succumbed to disease or gravity or storm. I found it lying on the beach at the base of a cliff, its naked frame silver and black. Worn root stumps reached from the butt, fingers scoured away by surf and time. I spied a stone grasped…
How many continents have traveled beneath this flesh Been held in reverence or punctured on demand? How many miles of emotions have rolled like oceans and rough seas Or teased to wonder why? How many stories held safe? How many lies of omission never fully crossed the lifelines, Waiting to be thrown or held back…
Afternoon sun, cutting sharp shadows on clamshell, white pebble, gray beach glass, green (such familiar things), warms each March beachgoer, including the heartless seagulls dropping helpless mussels from the sky to open them. Down across the sand an unlanguaged man – vocal tic, facial twitch – stands in the mudflats going “hum hum hum”…
Bare branches clutch the dying moon, coyotes mourn and call Poor attempts to hold this moth drawn to the beloved Flame Though she shall be reduced to ash then thrust forth born again Jamie Maciejewski belongs to Wordways, a group of women on the Olympic Peninsula who write and share pilgrimages of faith and life.…
Kindred 