Julia Bouwsma
Midden
Coiled umbilical of a dried daisy petal, toenail
shell, pilfered spoon, three teeth left
in a weasel’s yellowed jawbone, rusty fishhook
still lucky, scratch of granite you chiseled
from the wishing rock, words
white as bones never buried in earth—
for every sorrow that’s been dug from you,
here is a pile of rubble twice as high.
Julia Bouwsma is the author of MIDDEN (Fordham University Press, forthcoming 2018) and Work by Bloodlight (Cider Press Review, 2017). Her work appears in Bellingham Review, Grist Online, Muzzle, Salamander, RHINO, River Styx, and other journals. She lives and works on an off-the-grid farm in the mountains of western Maine where she serves as Book Review Editor for Connotation Press: An Online Artifact and as Library Director for Webster Library in Kingfield, Maine.
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