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  • Issue 22 Fall 2021
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      • Bonnie Severien Fall 2021
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    • Issue #22 Poetry Fall 2021 >
      • Maureen Alsop Fall 2021
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      • Sara Moore Fall 2021
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  • Issue 23 Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Art Spring 2022 >
      • Jonathan Kvassay Spring 2022
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      • Robin Gow Spring 2022
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      • Phil Goldstein Spring 2022
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      • Brittney Corrigan Spring 2022
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      • MICHAEL CHANG Spring 2022
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  • Issue #24 Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Art Fall 2022 >
      • Marsha Solomon Fall 2022
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      • Millicent Borges Accardi Fall 2022
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      • Whitney Koo Fall 2022
      • W. J. Lofton Fall 2022
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    • Issue #24 Fiction Fall 2022 >
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    • Issue #24 Nonfiction Fall 2022 >
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      • Anna Oberg Fall 2022
      • Acadia Currah Fall 2022

Laura Donnelly

The Jack Loom

​
i.
 
Blue jeans torn in strips, knotted
and loomed, now rolled
before drafts or folded in closets,
faded in a kitchen
thirty years back where I sit
with Great-Grandmother playing
Aggravation, Chinese Checkers,
marbles ticking over the cardboard maze.
Her skin is transparent as Bible pages.
She licks one finger, flips
to another verse.
 
 
ii.
 
Shirts in primary colors
come in from the fields, once thick
warp and weft now a sieve.
Coveralls, curtains, housedresses
of dotted Swiss worn through Michigan
summers. We pick up the red stain
of strawberry like a ghost woven
under our feet.  
 
 
iii.                   
 
Her wicker basket was a bassinet
for castoffs, her scissor’s mouth
measuring waste not
want not.
                                                       
Let the treadle be similarly unrushed.
Let the weft be secure
from breast beam to back.
 
Let the sound of cloth
loosed into cloth
rise again
when we enter the house.



After Blake


Blake’s version of Eve:
          prayer hands slightly parted,
 
body arcing towards God.
          Her skin is the negative space
 
of the painting, a halo
          beneath the curled moon. Or
 
the halo emanates
          from God, his white gown
 
the brightest thing
          in Eden, his body a pillar
 
except for the arm
          that reaches, the thumb
 
relaxed as his palm pulls Eve up –
          And yes, the man sleeps
 
underneath her new feet,
          their limbs almost touching
 
but no sign of rib, no red gash
          in his side. She floats
 
like a dream or the distance
          between Adam’s sleep
 
and God’s hand, or perhaps
          God’s hand measures
 
the distance between
          her white brow and the moon –
 
Blake has not made it clear,
          the hierarchy, if there is
 
hierarchy, but even now
          as God’s hand
 
draws her up (or the moon
          does so), the line
 
of one calf suggests
          motion. Smallest flick
 
of Blake’s wrist. Between them
          the muscle testing
 
its new weight forward
          into world.


Garden Vernacular

          Vernacular gardens, by definition, are gardens of ordinary people
                    ​– Ced Dolder, “Vernacular Gardens”

Ordinary as a glass of milk, a gun,
a trio of stray cats that came to us
from the fields. Shall I name
all the flowers again? Yucca, daylily,
peony, hens-and-chicks – I’m tired of listing them.
Suffice it to say I watered those daylilies
thirty minutes each day, pulled 500 weeds
and dropped them into a Maxwell House tin,
scratched each task from my childhood
chore list as if I could answer
the world’s demands.
                                        When we left,
I followed the angels’ decree: didn’t 
turn back or clap, call or croon. For a long time
I thought history went to the winners,
and we were not them.
 
But then our mother’s new garden
unfurled, winding and strange on a city block –
the gloriosa daisies between cracks
in cement, ferns lapping up the dusky shade,
like hush and wonder. They tended
our secrets until our secrets no longer
needed tending.
 
It was not unusual to see bear cubs
in that garden. It was not unusual
 
to see that garden breathe.







--
Laura Donnelly's second poetry collection, Midwest Gothic, was selected by Maggie Smith for the 2019 Snyder Prize at Ashland Poetry Press. Donnelly is also the author of Watershed (Cider Press Review Editors' Prize), and her poems have appeared in Missouri Review, Indiana Review, Harvard Review, PANK, and elsewhere. Originally from Michigan, she lives in Upstate New York and is on the creative writing faculty at SUNY Oswego.

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  • Home
  • About
    • Our Story
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  • Features
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  • Issue 22 Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Art Fall 2021 >
      • Bonnie Severien Fall 2021
      • Camilla Taylor Fall 2021
      • Guilherme Bergamini Fall 2021
      • Emanuela Iorga Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Poetry Fall 2021 >
      • Maureen Alsop Fall 2021
      • Annah Browning Fall 2021
      • Romana Iorga Fall 2021
      • Natalie Hampton Fall 2021
      • Sherine Gilmour Fall 2021
      • Adam Day Fall 2021
      • Amanda Auchter Fall 2021
      • Adam Tavel Fall 2021
      • Sara Moore Fall 2021
      • Karen Rigby Fall 2021
      • Daniel Zhang Fall 2021
      • Erika Lutzner Fall 2021
      • Kindall Fredricks Fall 2021
      • Cin Salach Fall 2021
      • Andrew Zawacki Fall 2021
      • Micah Ruelle Fall 2021
      • Rachel Stempel Fall 2021
      • Haley Wooning Fall 2021
      • Rikki Santer Fall 2021
      • Evy Shen Fall 2021
      • Suzanne Frischkorn Fall 2021
      • Danielle Rose Fall 2021
      • Eric Burgoyne Fall 2021
      • John Cullen Fall 2021
      • Maureen Seaton Fall 2021
      • Hannah Stephens Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Nonfiction Fall 2021 >
      • Kevin Grauke Fall 2021
      • Courtney Justus Fall 2021
      • Amy Nicholson Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Fiction Fall 2021 >
      • Tina Jenkins Bell Fall 2021
      • David Obuchowski Fall 2021
      • Thomas Misuraca Fall 2021
      • Aiden Baker Fall 2021
      • Jenny Magnus Fall 2021
  • Issue 23 Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Art Spring 2022 >
      • Jonathan Kvassay Spring 2022
      • Karyna McGlynn Spring 2022
      • Andrea Kowch Spring 2022
      • Layla Garcia-Torres Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Poetry Spring 2022 >
      • Robin Gow Spring 2022
      • T.D. Walker Spring 2022
      • Jen Schalliol Huang Spring 2022
      • Yvonne Zipter Spring 2022
      • Carrie McGath Spring 2022
      • Lupita Eyde-Tucker Spring 2022
      • Susan L. Leary Spring 2022
      • Kate Sweeney Spring 2022
      • Rita Mookerjee Spring 2022
      • Erin Carlyle Spring 2022
      • Cori Bratty-Rudd Spring 2022
      • Jen Karetnick Spring 2022
      • Meghan Sterling Spring 2022
      • Lorelei Bacht Spring 2022
      • Michael Passafiume Spring 2022
      • Jeannine Hall Gailey Spring 2022
      • Phil Goldstein Spring 2022
      • Michael Mingo Spring 2022
      • Angie Macri Spring 2022
      • Martha Silano Spring 2022
      • Vismai Rao Spring 2022
      • Anna Laura Reeve Spring 2022
      • Jenny Irish Spring 2022
      • Marek Kulig Spring 2022
      • Jami Macarty Spring 2022
      • Sarah A. Rae Spring 2022
      • Brittney Corrigan Spring 2022
      • Callista Buchen Spring 2022
      • Issam Zineh Spring 2022
      • MICHAEL CHANG Spring 2022
      • henry 7. reneau, jr. Spring 2022
      • Leah Umansky Spring 2022
      • Cody Beck Spring 2022
      • Danyal Kim Spring 2022
      • Rachel DeWoskin Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Fiction Spring 2022 >
      • Melissa Boberg Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Nonfiction Spring 2022 >
      • Srinaath Perangur Spring 2022
      • Audrey T. Carroll Spring 2022
  • Issue #24 Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Art Fall 2022 >
      • Marsha Solomon Fall 2022
      • Edward Lee Fall 2022
      • Harryette Mullen Fall 2022
      • Jezzelle Kellam Fall 2022
      • Irina Greciuhina Fall 2022
      • Natalie Christensen Fall 2022
      • Mark Yale Harris Fall 2022
      • Amy Nelder Fall 2022
      • Bette Ridgeway Fall 2022
      • Ursula Sokolowska Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Poetry Fall 2022 >
      • William Stobb Fall 2022
      • e Fall 2022
      • Stefanie Kirby Fall 2022
      • Lisa Ampleman Fall 2022
      • Will Cordeiro Fall 2022
      • Jesica Davis Fall 2022
      • Peter O'Donovan Fall 2022
      • Mackenzie Carignan Fall 2022
      • Jason Fraley Fall 2022
      • Barbara Saunier Fall 2022
      • Chad Weeden Fall 2022
      • Nick Rattner Fall 2022
      • Cynthia Schwartzberg Edlow Fall 2022
      • Summer J. Hart Fall 2022
      • Daniel Suá​rez Fall 2022
      • Sara Kearns Fall 2022
      • Millicent Borges Accardi Fall 2022
      • Liz Robbins Fall 2022
      • john compton Fall 2022
      • Esther Sadoff Fall 2022
      • Whitney Koo Fall 2022
      • W. J. Lofton Fall 2022
      • Rachel Reynolds Fall 2022
      • Kimberly Ann Priest Fall 2022
      • Annie Przypyszny Fall 2022
      • Konstantin Kulakov Fall 2022
      • Nellie Cox Fall 2022
      • Jennifer Martelli Fall 2022
      • SM Stubbs Fall 2022
      • Joshua Bird Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Fiction Fall 2022 >
      • Otis Fuqua Fall 2022
      • Hannah Harlow Fall 2022
      • Natalia Nebel Fall 2022
      • Kate Maxwell Fall 2022
      • Helena Pantsis Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Nonfiction Fall 2022 >
      • Courtney Ludwick Fall 2022
      • Anna Oberg Fall 2022
      • Acadia Currah Fall 2022