Julie Gonnering Lein
—
Indefinite Article
an ice deal
teal land
dirt flirt feel
a creel flair
near need
inter-flit dare
fern tree trail
antler care rain
red fire finial
tender deer aid
I needle linen
I entertain
I attend a lenient fear
I cradle tin
a tern tilted
entire acre
a delicate eider field
a rattle related
internal antic
a fenced itinerant fair
I learn a faint tale
I tread far
I rifle lantern flint
I defer
an enticed drift
a frail Denali calf
an altered lit leaf
an iterated life
Equinox :: Agate
Little one, we
are split
sequence, plural
pulse; in time we
integrate
to quadruped--
our differential gaits
our quarters opening
each to each new
presence: opening
as pressed, stretched
chalcedonic vernix, tears
in membranes; we reach
through, seeking instinct
impulse to meet: your eyes
your twilit banded blue
quartz sequins
Julie Gonnering Lein is author of the chapbooks Seed (South Dakota Poetry Society contest winner, 2024) and Glacier, Perfect Tense (Dancing Girl Press). Her work was shortlisted for the Helena Whitehill Book Award and has won a Larry Levis Memorial Poetry Prize (Academy of American Poets), the Hal Prize in Poetry, and the Winter Anthology Annual Contest. Poems have appeared in Colorado Review, Best New Poets, Bateau, The Laurel Review, Bellingham Review, Barrow Street, Terrain.org, Phoebe, and elsewhere. She lives in South Dakota’s Black Hills with her family.
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