Natalie Young
Jealousy and Greed Are Green or
The Alien Tries to Explain his Flat Temper
Each particle sets the next
in motion, a giant ripple—the universe and its parts
an ocean.
His arms outstretch, fingers spread
the air, as though slowly treading water. You feel space
passing, even
when you don’t see. Atoms
giving and getting. Everything trying to be
equal, to make a constant.
He stands there looking
ethereal and like a Tai chi instructor.
Me to you
you to something else,
matter is meant to keep moving.
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: Northeast Ohio Maple Grove by Andrew Marshall. Watercolor. 11 x 14 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.
