Krista’s next selection for the best of 2024 is I’ll Buy You a Bird Instead by Natalie Easton (Femme Salvé Books 2022), selected originally by guest editor Sierra Farrare.
Jackie O.
“They’re just staring because we’re beautiful,”
you’d say. After a while we figured
it must be your Jackie Onassis hair,
not your hand holding mine
‘til age twelve, your pinky tucked
between our palms like a small animal
burrowing away from the light. I found it
comforting and irritating: your long nail
mindlessly chafing, hard as a beak.
We slipped under the lights, ducked our chins,
did our famous grocery shopping.
Natalie Easton’s poems have appeared in such publications as Jet Fuel Review, Superstition Review, and tinywords. She was nominated for a Pushcart in 2014, and was a contributor at Bread Loaf in 2015. Her debut chapbook, I’ll Buy You a Bird Instead, was published by Femme Salvé Books on November 9th, 2022.
Sierra Farrare is a short fiction writer from Baltimore, Maryland. In addition to a limited self-published run of her collection, Friday Night Hand Grenade, you can also find her work featured in Pretty Owl Poetry and University of Baltimore’s Welter.
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