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The History of a Window Overlooking the Wetlands
by Kelly Gray

August 13, 2021 Contributed By: Kelly Gray

window - pixabay

By the white tile of tub, water becomes the smell of ceanothus morning. Cow bellow mist slinks the soft hand of hill. Wood collects moisture, swells against steam. Drag your finger across glass. Below, a trellis of jasmine. A library, an owl beneath bell jar. A brick oven, built in burst of cala lily. A bee-hived hill into town. Pennywort, tule, sedge, rush. Pinch strands of rattle snake grass to disperse our fields cut by quakes. You are bird, pollinating. Blistered palms of nettle, finding home beneath twisted bough of cypress. Fallow deer of lore, a skunk digs delicate. 

The marsh whispers deep. Bring the hot water bath, the soap made of sheep’s milk. Lay your feet along our muddy bank, your knees patched with sand. The otter will wait to pull down a heron, hear the croak against long body splash. Leave behind hair, tousled with rose blossom. Take off your skin, scabbed with words you cannot write. Unhinge your rib cage, exposing each lung to the westerlies. Turn three times, till all the handprints fall from your legs. Here, your breath is tidal hush. You are a view coming in, willowed and wet. Creature of crawdad and mosquitofish.


KELLY GRAY (she/her) resides on Coast Miwok land amongst the tallest and quietest trees in the world, deep in fire country. Kelly has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Atticus Review and Best of the Net by The Account Magazine, and her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Passages North, Pithead Chapel, Pretty Owl Poetry, The Normal School, River Teeth, Lunch Ticket, The Inflectionist Review, and more. Her debut book of poetry, ‘Instructions for an Animal Body,’ is forthcoming from Moon Tide Press. You can read her work at writekgray.com.

Filed Under: Featured Content, Poetry Posted On: August 13, 2021

Further Reading

Time Space
by Eric Barnes

“If a dollar was only ten cents,” our middle child, Carmen, says as she digs into her purse, “everything would be a lot cheaper.” I turn to her, ready to respond, to correct her mistaken notion. But then I pause, my mind suddenly locked up. Her mother squints, lips moving, she too attempting to work […]

THE HADITHA DAM by M. C. Armstrong

Soviet cement, Yankee tenants, Belches of Euphrates Pass SEALs on the eastern shore Contractors in ramshackle camps to the west. An ex-swat cop in a tea-cloth told me not to swim Unless I wanted cancer like the Hadithans, As if to confirm the rumors of Chemical Ali’s hidden stash— The secret flow. Every paper boy […]

1.28 by Martial
(Translated from Latin by David Macey)

“He reeks of last night’s wine!” That’s off the mark. He drinks until dawn clarifies the dark.     Hesterno fetere mero qui credit Acerram, fallitur: in lucem semper Acerra bibit.     Return to table of contents for Issue 12 Winter 2018.

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