Take a mattress. Put it in our woods.  

Art by Victoria Parker

Poetry by Kristin Withers

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how it is you have found yourself within 

               me; found you out – antlers scuttling raw 

               around the lake, 

 

               again & again, a determination 

found in my pacing, so that 

               looming in the floral spores before their teething 

 

churned bit by bit & lived in – I have 

been in you, 

               one referent & oscillating twilight

 

of the symmetries we are authors 

               nacreous not recreant

the first folders of wedding dress & sewists 

 

of mudded foul & too, 

               the congenital dowry  

an exercise in every 

 

               djinn in fugue & moving 

root; confession – even in turning 

from me – when I was both     

 

contractual & of plasticity –  being both  

               there and feeling, 

               our imbued room (trespassed) 


as I returned —

               sanguine & slept in 

               having unbecome you & been menstruous

 

I used my hands & still the sea 

rich in silver chevron & no smell 

               to remember, how it would no longer reveal itself

 

               (but these disobedient 

               salivas —showing themselves & collating)

but mistook a the cadence of a quest for a guest 

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Visual artist Victoria Parker draws inspiration from dream worlds and contrasts in nature and urban environments. She collects odd vintage figurines and beach rocks and is currently saving up dryer lint with which she will make her brother a surprise doll. A native Seattleite, she has also lived in Kalamazoo, New York City and Okinawa, Japan. She lives in Seattle with her husband and two children. 

 

Kristin Withers is a poet currently residing in the Pacific Northwest. She has been an industrial sewist, coffee roaster, bookseller, realty & teaching assistant. Kristin’s disciplined in analytic philosophy, focusing particularly on epistemology & the metaphysics of consciousness. With initial publication at The Inquisitive Eater: New School Food, she is currently working on a gallery in liminal nocturne & a concept collection of autoscopic language poetry.

Issue XIV