Devon Balwit

If You Don’t Like What You See, Turn

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We find ourselves amidst spattering. Sometimes droplets, sometimes skin, percussive, the heart both daub and paradiddle. Singular cells chorale blood’s mad flood. All this to say we’re never just hell or halleluiah. We summon spirits from air, shake them from shadows, decide battle’s end with hands quick as scythe blades. How lucky never to be just. A flick of the wrist changes figure to ground.

 

About the writer:
Devon Balwit‘s most recent collection is titled A Brief Way to Identify a Body (Ursus Americanus Press). Her individual poems can be found or are upcoming in Jet Fuel, The Cincinnati Review, Tampa Review, Rattle, Apt (long-form issue), Grist, and Oxidant Engine among others. Devon Balwit is the O:JA&L Featured Writer for June 2019.

Image: The Almost Amish Girl by Andre Goncalves, Madeira Island. Fine art photograph. No technical information specified. 2016. By permission.