West Trade Review: "Solunar Theory" by Kimberly Ann Priest

Kimberly Anne Priest

Image by Lucas Ludwig from Unsplash

Solunar Theory

If your mouth

renders me willing

it is only because,

somewhere outside the biosphere,

my mother’s gone ghost

examines each spoke of star to see

if its meaning is gleaming

and rare. Do not

cast your pearls, she inscribed

into the mind-map of my youth,

so I found a stone

at the lake’s shore to lie upon

and temper all my energies

with the lip-lap of Superior’s

fathomless crone.

The angle

is perfect for reading a dome of stars

and fish kissing up.

There are motions

one can only feel in the most celibate seasons;

you are nipping along

the collar of my shirt. It is night.

The surface of the water is speechless

and teeming.

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Kimberly Ann Priest is the author of Slaughter the One Bird, finalist in the American Best Book Awards, and chapbooks The Optimist Shelters in Place, Parrot Flower, and Still Life. She is an associate poetry editor for Nimrod International Journal of Prose and Poetry and assistant professor at Michigan State University.

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