by Amy Small-McKinney
Don’t pray to be healed, or look for evidence
of some other world.
There is no other. Here, we are here,
ground cracked and tender.
A blade of grass a mouth.
Even a broken body
in another room
still sees the moon.
Even you, in your bed alone, a moon.
AMY SMALL-MCKINNEY won The Kithara Book Prize 2016 (Glass Lyre Press) for her second full-length collection of poems, Walking Toward Cranes. Her poems have appeared in Connotation Press: An Online Artifact, The Indianapolis Review, American Poetry Review, The Cortland Review, Construction, LIPS, Tiferet Journal, and elsewhere. Her poems have also been translated into both Korean and Romanian. Most recently, her poems have appeared in two anthologies, including Collateral Damage, A Pirene’s Fountain Anthology, and 50/50 Poems & Translations by Women over 50 (Quills Edge Press). Small-McKinney teaches community poetry workshops in Philadelphia; her mission is to help poets take risks within the safe container of poetry.
Photo: “Celebration of the Lizard” by Antoine Gady
Psaltery & Lyre 