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Annie Stenzel
On Mother’s Day, I nestle beneath
a poem’s feathered wing
You’ve seen goslings with their fluff-ball bodies
pressed into a scrum underneath their mother’s heft?
This is as safe as it gets, with no other roof than sky
and the sky home to falcon after eagle after red-tailed
hawk, for all of which a gosling
is a tender treat, if left unprotected.
. My mother is a cloud of words. My mother
. is a wash of sunlight catching leaves, first
one side, then the other when the wind
picks up. My mother is the waft of all spring
flowers rushing to fill me with their scent.
Oh lilac! Oh freesia! Oh wisteria!
. My other mother is a lightning bolt’s quick burst, sent
. to charge me with a poem’s essential parts.
To fly is impossible; and why would I want to flee?
My face upturned like any baby bird’s, I would starve
without the delivery of words, the way each one arrives
as if desperate to nourish me. The way I hunger
and thirst for the mot juste, which will slide into me
like the most perfect elixir.
About the writer:
Annie Stenzel (she/her) is a lesbian poet who was born in Illinois, but did not stay put. Her second full-length collection, Don’t misplace the moon, was recently published by Kelsay Books. Her poems have appeared U.S. and U.K. journals including Atlas and Alice, Chestnut Review, Galway Review, Kestrel, Night Heron Barks, On the Seawall, Rust + Moth, Saranac Review, SoFloPoJo, SWWIM, The Lake, and UCity Review. A poetry editor for the online journals Right Hand Pointing and West Trestle Review, she lives on unceded Ohlone land within walking distance of the San Francisco Bay.
Image: A Field of California Poppies by Granville Redmond (1871-1935). Oil on canvas. 26 x 36 inches. 1911. Public domain.
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