Melissa McKinstry
Image by Juan Pablo Serrano Arenas from Pexels
Melissa McKinstry earned her MFA in poetry at Pacific University. Her work has appeared in Rattle Alaska Quarterly Review, Rust & Moth, december, earned honorable mention for the Steve Kowit Poetry Prize as well as contests at Crab Creek Review and The Comstock Review, and is forthcoming in Beloit Poetry Journal.
My Love, Increase My Bewilderment
––after Fanny Howe’s “Bewilderment”
It snowed all night. It did not snow.
Was I in the barn of my childhood,
the Appaloosa’s warm stall: oats, ears?
The dream-construction isn’t binding,
but a kind of salvation between whip
and ink. Like a poem by Hafiz. I’m
a voyeur attentive only to your light,
to brewing the finest stock from your
bones, your polyvalence. You can be
snow, rain, hail, any precipitate. You
salvage me even when I’m Hidden.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
©2023 West Trade Review
Stay Connected to Our Literary Community. Subscribe to Our Newsletter
Listen to Poem:
