Brittany Barron

In the Torn Photo, Little Mad Girl

feeds ducks, stretches her Little
Mad Girl arms toward the blue water.
She smiles, and small waves sparkle.
 
Her arms stretch toward the blue water.
She will never be as happy as she is now
when she smiles, and small waves sparkle.
Mad Girl lingers beside a dark water.
 
She will never be as happy as she is now.
The ducks will leave; the lake will freeze.
Mad Girl lingers beside a dark water.
The sun’s dissolving, the ice crystallizing.
 
The ducks will leave; the lake will freeze.
There’s a white winter in Mad Girl’s head.
The sun’s dissolving, the ice crystallizing.
In that photograph, it’s fall, but
 
there’s a white winter in Mad Girl’s head.
Mad Girl sees oranges and reds in a photo
of Little Mad Girl, where it’s fall,
not in the colors that drop dead.
​

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In May 2019, Brittany J. Barron graduated with her MFA in Creative Writing at Georgia College, where she served as co-Assistant Poetry Editor of Arts & Letters and taught freshman composition. Her poetry has appeared in Still, a journal dedicated to publishing Southern-Appalachian writers; The Examined Life Journal; and Not Your Mother’s Breast Milk. This fall, she began Florida State University’s PhD program in Literature, Media, and Culture.