Judith Roney

41°48’N 87°35.4’W to 28°21’28”N 80° 41’5”W (Coordinates for a human)

            A starting point fixes itself, arbitrary,
but wait long enough and it carves words
to the bone
to the memory
to the boxes you’ll carry
 
            Move east to the nearest meridian:
(but you might be stalling)
an unrewarded effort,
smoky, waterless
farmland—wasted
 
            Create spherical tracks:
lampblack, soot-filled prints, soles
of the calloused foot pressed,
indentation of the skittery shadow,
a passage of the first, weary anniversary
 
We who eat myths
take time to locate a gravity to hold us:
            a south-moon fish-
            camp, an island apart,
            a beach-line road where a dark horse feeds
 under approaching celestial globes
 
An unnamed event approaches:
the foot stops shaking
the story unfolds:
            the gods have left their mountain



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Judith Roney is currently winding up her second semester of the University of Central Florida’s MFA program. While her focus of writing is poetry, she writes fiction and nonfiction pieces as well. As a GTA she currently teaches creative writing workshops to adults challenged by mental illness. Judith was selected by UCF for the “Outstanding Senior Undergraduate Poetry Award,” in 2012, and as a graduate student for the 2013 AWP Intro Journals Award. Her ction and poetry have appeared or is forthcoming in Steam Ticket, Foothill: A Journal of Poetry, Gambling the Aisle, Zaum,and ird Wednesday as well as other publications. She confesses to having an obsession with Ireland, dead relatives, the possibilities of haunted sites, and vintage religious relics.