It's #tbt! Enjoy this great one from SWWIM Every Day's archives!
You loved me as sword grass, ungreen and venomous, my new edges drawing scar, you loved me as heron, long-legged and coastal, as catastrophic forest fire, blackened limbs and skin as translucent as winter leaves, full dead and metamorphic, my awful knees locking between your ribs without a single rattle or cicada song. You loved me as barren, unable to flesh, as unhatched egg in April snow, as discarded nest, feathers and fur dissipating at my death-moth touch. You loved me as teeth, as fingernail, as bottled ship in an unforgiving ocean, as broken mirror shards. You loved me as wanderer, desert-starved and waterless, as scalpel-carved, without appendix or breast, you loved me as other, hungry-boned and insubstantial, as half-remembered crow song, as ghost to my unfed self.
Beth Gordon is a poet, mother and grandmother currently living in Asheville, NC. Her poetry has been widely published and nominated for Best of the Net, the Pushcart Prize, and the Orison Anthology. She is the author of two previous chapbooks and her full-length poetry collection, This Small Machine of Prayer, was published in 2021 (Kelsay Books). Her third chapbook, The Water Cycle, is being published by Variant Lit in January 2022. She is Managing Editor of Feral: A Journal of Poetry and Art, Assistant Editor of Animal Heart Press, and Grandma of Femme Salve Books.
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