This selection, chosen by Guest Editor Jordi Alonso, is from Footnoteby Trish Hopkinson, released by Lithic Press in 2017.
Ars Moriendi*
“A SIMPLE Child, / That lightly draws its breath, / And feels its life in every limb, / What should it know of death?” –William Wordsworth
Called back, she slipped quiet into the longest length of sleep – quiet enough to hear the buzz of an insect’s paper wings.
Stoic stillness, a marble statue – soul and matter merged, unlike neglected memorials – initialed stone preserved.
Slipped through fields, beyond the barn – carried by six Irishmen – in infant white with violets and a blushed cypripedium.
None are forbidden by Death – an ungrown spirit when alive, promoted to Empress when past – the dying eye saw an act of light.
*for Emily Dickinson
Trish Hopkinson is a poet and advocate for the literary arts. You can find her online at SelfishPoet.com and provisionally in Colorado, where she runs the regional poetry group Rock Canyon Poets, curates the Poetry Happens series for KRCL 90.9 FM, and is a Poetry Reader for The Adroit Journal. Her poetry has been published in several lit mags and journals, including Sugar House Review, Glass Poetry Press, and The Penn Review; her third chapbook Footnote was published by Lithic Press in 2017, and her most recent e-chapbook Almost Famous was published by Yavanika Press in 2019. Hopkinson happily answers to labels such as atheist, feminist, and empty nester; and enjoys traveling, live music, and craft beer.
Jordi Alonso holds a BA from Kenyon College, an MFA from Stony Brook University, and a PhD in English from the University of Missouri where he studied nineteenth century British literature, classical reception in the Victorian era, and ancient Greek. He will begin his studies towards an MA in Classical Studies at Columbia University in the fall. His first book, a collection of erotic poems inspired by Sappho, Honeyvoiced, was published by XOXOX Press in November of 2014. His chapbook, The Lovers’ Phrasebook was published in 2017 by Red Flag Press. He is currently writing a third book of poems based on ancient Greek divination practices at Delphi.
