What Rough Beast | Poem for June 10, 2018

Deborah Bacharach
Fallen Island

I’m not jacked up by fear.
I shelter in chimes, iron
hawks.
Lavender light
I see how you loan
rocky beaches and rolling hills,
to the sand dollars. Once upon a breath
I squalled
with sharp edged stalks.
I swallowed a wisp of lions.
And fear?
It still rustles.
It still rises from the waves.

 

 

Deborah Bacharach is the author of After I Stop Lying (Cherry Grove Collections, 2015). Her work has appeared in Typishly, The Moth, Pembroke Magazine, and The Antigonish Review among many others. Her work has also appeared in Jump Start: A Northwest Renaissance Anthology (Steel Toe Books, 2009), edited by Lonny Kaneko, Pat Curran, and Susan Landgraf; A Fierce Brightness: Twenty-Five Years of Women’s Poetry (Calyx Books, 2002), edited by Margarita Donnelly, Beverly McFarland, Micki Reaman, and Carole Simmons Oles; and Sex and Single Girls: Women Write on Sexuality (Seal Press, 2000), edited by Lee Damsky. She is a writing professor, tutor and editor in Seattle. Find out more about her at DeborahBacharach.com.

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