This selection, chosen by guest editor Joey Gould, is from Reaching the Shore of the Sea of Fertility by Anna Laura Reeve (Belle Point Press 2023).
Children Are Not the Glue
A towhee says ‘sree’ somewhere
and I agree. Spring tips toward summer,
balanced on one knuckle and full
of pleasure.
Ten foamflower stems arc high above flat leaves,
open like kids’ hands, asking for something.
Putting thoughts of my 4-year-old aside,
I draw the breath that kindles
beneath my sternum, and re-enter the world.
How content, in this place, is each thing
to be what it is. Carolina wrens waiting for a calm
to sing their voluble songs.
Towering maples and hackberries solid
and strange as sliding boulders in the Sahara—
both speaking and secret.
Jays and mockingbirds not caring who knows it.
My heart goes one way, my body goes another.
Children are not the glue to keep them together.
The towhee pair keep a wary distance, always.
One chestnut brown, one boot black,
calling to each other.
Anna Laura Reeve is the author of Reaching the Shore of the Sea of Fertility (Belle Point Press, 2023). Winner of the 2022 Adrienne Rich Award for Poetry, selected by American poet Jane Hirshfield, Reeve was also a finalist for the Greg Grummer Poetry Contest, the Ron Rash Award, the Heartwood Poetry Prize, and won the 2024 Emerging Writers Award from the East Tennessee Writers Hall of Fame. Her poems have appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Salamander, Terrain.org, and others. She is a two-time Pushcart nominee, and lives with her daughter and husband near the Tennessee Overhill region, traditional land of the Eastern Cherokee.
Joey Gould, who is Sundress Academy for the Arts Spring 2024 Writer in Residence, wrote The Acute Avian Heart (2019, Lily Poetry Review) & Penitent>Arbiter (2022, Lily Poetry Review), while their recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Meow Meow Pow Pow, Miniskirt Magazine, & Persephone’s Fruit. They also serve as Poetry Editor for Drunk Monkeys.
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