Having Broken, Are

Evelyn Reilly
Having been brainwashed as children we must suspect ourselves always Dogged associations such as a clearing in the woods closing at the rate         of your own aging Your arbitrary name-sound wobbling in the same breeze         that makes it impossible to turn over a new leaf definitively You can only step into the fray
from the book Having Broken, Are / BlazeVOX Books

What Sparks Poetry is a serialized feature that explores experiences and ideas that spark the writing of new poems.

In Ecopoetry Now, invited poets engage in an ecopoetic conversation across borders. In poems and poetics statements, their work describes important local differences, including bioregion and language, as well as a shared concern for the Earth. We hope to highlight poetry’s integral role in creating and sustaining a broadly ecological imagination that is most alive when biologically, culturally, and linguistically diverse.

Evelyn Reilly on "Having Broken, Are"
Photo: Evelyn Reilly
Mia Dimina
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Remica Bingham-Risher
Those weeks after spiriting me into the world, my mother watches the news, looks over at my father too frequently, calls his name each time he heads to another room—delirious in her exhaustion and fear—where was he, would he disappear? And the little girl, what world was this for her to enter?
Nate Duke
while a cat I've never met scales my chest, nestles into sleep. A kind of recompense I think, for lives we didn't choose—because winter's animal bed needed fresh straw, or the woodstove in our bunkhouse grew cold, and somebody had to get up and stoke it.
Cameron Barnett
pull the cord tighter till he says it, tighter still until he feels it in his bones—nigga—and when he gets hot enough start a fire, nigga
Etienne Marsolet
Laurel leaf seedpod helix of spine shadeloving dark frond blown-over seacoast...

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