THE GODDESS SEES HER REFLECTION IN A WASH BASIN

Winner of F(r)iction‘s Spring 2021 Poetry Contest.

Wormwood made
her moon shine.
The Good Book

lied. The last days
came first, came
in the fertile years,

each one a breast.
Her lips made words
to plant a new nation

full of old county dirt
before the weather
was on her body,

burning like a broad
lawn, her hair like drawn
flames, her mother’s screams

once wood, are now dust
and oranges. She notes how
limbs break mid-flow

like a misstep,
like a shifting line, whitening
even the fullest fires.

her arm is, just as night is,
silence. Dark acres
and white clover

are a gesture
towards the curve
of her bended knee.

Aaron Graham

Aaron Graham is a US Marine Corps veteran. He is the author of three books of poetry, Arabic with a Redneck Accent (2018), Bloodstripes (2020), and Casualties (2021) His work has appeared in Scalawag: A Journal of the South, and Rising Phoenix Press, among others. He served as the editor-in-chief for the Squaw Valley Review, Muse/A and Sandstorm: A journal of Arts and Letters, he is an alumnus of Squaw Valley Writers Workshop and The Ashbury Home School, and the Cambridge Writer’s Workshop. Aaron is a graduate of UCNG’s MFA Poetrey program, Emory University's PhD Program in Literature, and holds an MA and BA from UWYO. He currently resides in Dallas, TX with his partner and twins to be.

eluela31

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