by Laura Donnelly
On my back
my ears underwater
but not
my mouth my breath tuned
a strange subterranean –
I think this is what it sounds like
in my head
just air at the back of the throat
and the heart’s wet thud
I can’t hear the dredge the birds
at the fence –
Sometimes
it is easy to forget
parched lips or
not forget
but our mouths tipping orange
legs drifting
the heron’s world without
end/amen
LAURA DONNELLY’S second poetry collection, Midwest Gothic, was selected by Maggie Smith for the 2019 Snyder Prize at Ashland Poetry Press. Donnelly is also the author of Watershed (Cider Press Review 2014), and her poems have appeared in Missouri Review, Indiana Review, Harvard Review, PANK, and elsewhere. Originally from Michigan, she lives in Upstate New York and is on the creative writing faculty at SUNY Oswego.
Psaltery & Lyre 