In the damp of rain, I swept leaves rusted with dying.
There wasn’t peace, there should have been peace—
still in the crevices another too-small child
scurrying across brick & bog. Where do children
rest? I could never answer, never satisfy, I clamped
each child for too long & when one by one they sustained
themselves, how I was held & how I was broken
& in breaking unchained
each song.
Alicia Elkort edited and contributed to the chapbook Creekside, published by Berkeley Poetry Review, where she also served as an editor. Her poetry was featured in the Ishaan Literary Review and has been published in, among other journals, Elsewhere Lit, Menacing Hedge, AGNI, Stirring, and Rogue Agent. She works as an accountant for film and television and is currently producing a documentary on global traditions of prayer. (updated 10/2017)
Jenn Givhan, a Mexican-American writer and activist from the Southwestern desert, is the author of four poetry collections, most recently Rosa’s Einstein (Camino Del Sol Poetry Series, 2019), two chapbooks, and two novels: Trinity Sight and Jubilee, both forthcoming from Blackstone Press. Her poems have appeared in The Best of the Net, The Best New Poets, Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, AGNI, The New Republic, and Kenyon Review. She has received, among other honors, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, a PEN/Rosenthal Emerging Voices fellowship, and New Ohio Review’s Poetry Prize, chosen by Tyehimba Jess. (updated 10/2019)