This selection, chosen by Managing Editor Krista Cox, is from Accidental Garden by Catherine Esposito Prescott (Gunpowder Press 2023).
Currency
The guru says observe silence
to unfold the divine
peace of the mind. Ancient load bearers,
women perch coiled in rope, coiled in metal,
coiled in dress, women with words piled
in their throats, words stopped from flying out
by coins placed like wafers in their mouths—
women’s words no longer for curing,
for cursing. This is how a woman saves
her currency, alters sacrament. They sit, eyelids folded,
gaze internal. I picture unspoken words
charging their bodies like the light of stars.
Inside, each churns, each travels
into the planetarium of the stilled
mind. The mind, the guru says, is a map
of the universe. The women sit
holding their silence tall,
their unspoken, a universe.
Catherine Esposito Prescott is the author of Accidental Garden, winner of The Barry Spacks Poetry Prize (Gunpowder Press, 2023), and two chapbooks. She is the co-founder of SWWIM and editor-in-chief of SWWIM Every Day. Some of her recent poems appear or are forthcoming in Colorado Review, Josephine Quarterly, NELLE, and Poets Reading the News. In addition to her work in poetry, Prescott teaches yoga philosophy and leads yoga and writing retreats.
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