This selection, chosen by guest editor john compton, is from Nighttime by Marina Hope Wilson (Cooper Dillon Books 2024).
The Drive
When I was young,
the hills were green like this
and you were strong and
unyielding as the hills—
green and full of
stories. Wet and fresh
as anyone equipped to live
in a car or under the sky.
You fought a man
much bigger than you
because he had drowned a kitten
in the river, and you said
anyone who would do that
had to be weak.
You, pure sinew, all
impulse and overflowing
with rain and green, like that.
Yes, like those hills just there.
I can see them now.
Marina Hope Wilson is the author of the chapbook, Nighttime (Cooper Dillon Books, 2024). Her poems have appeared in journals such as The Massachusetts Review, $, trampset, Stirring, Bicoastal Review, and SWWIM Every Day. Marina is a 2024-25 Friends of the San Francisco Public Library Brown-Handler Artist-in-Residence. She lives in San Francisco with her husband, stepdaughter, and two cats, and she makes her living as a speech-language therapist. 
