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Natalie Young
Follow the link to learn more about All of This Was Once Under Water , Natalie Young’s limited-edition, full-color hardcover book available in 2023 from Shop Quarter Press.
Exhausted
by More Than Just Tears and Empty Ice Cube Trays,
the Human Addresses the Alien’s Water Experiments
Did you know the ocean’s pH
is nearly identical to human blood?
Which feels true,
though it’s probably a myth.
What does every piece of life
come down to?
Two hydrogen atoms
clinging
to an oxygen.
That’s a lot of pressure
for three molecules.
Fascination is understandable
even obsession.
And yet
no matter the small hinge
this all rests on
you can’t alter chemistry—
the way water never changes
its constant
change.
About the writer:
Natalie Young is a founding editor for the poetry magazine Sugar House Review. By day, she works as an art director for an ad agency based out of Salt Lake City. These poems are part of a manuscript that mixes factual scenery and history with speculative fiction, in order to explore peculiarities in human nature, culture, and environment. Poems from this series have been published in Green Mountains Review, The Midwest Quarterly, Rattle, South Dakota Review, Drunken Boat, Pilgrimage, Spillway, and others. Natalie is left-handed, half Puerto Rican, and a fan of Carol Burnett and broccoli. Natalie Young is the Featured Writer at O:JAS&L for November 2018.
UPDATE: All of This Was Once Under Water is a limited-edition, full-color hardcover book that contains this and five other of Young’s poems published by OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters. The book, illustrated beautifully by the German artist Maximiliane Spieß, is now in release from Shop Quarter Press.
Image: Common Grackle Flying in Front of Surf by Andrew Marshall. Watercolor. 9 x 12 inches. By 2018. By permission
About the artist:
Andrew Marshall is a painter, writer, and photographer living and working in the eastern Sierras. His paintings, photographs, essays, and poetry have appeared or are forthcoming in Open: The Journal of Arts & Letters, The Offbeat Magazine, Gravel Magazine, Trampset Magazine, The Raven’s Perch, Junto Magazine, West Texas Literary Review, Upventur.com, and Backpackinglight.com. Andrew Marshall is the Featured Artist at O:JA&L for November 2018.
OJAL Art Incorporated, publishing since 2017 as OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters (O:JA&L) and its imprint Buttonhook Press, is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation supporting writers and artists worldwide.
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