Sara Kearns
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Baptism by Fire

Foolhardy, they removed me from the water.
Somehow branches, somehow vines.
                                                          Although I do not recall the sun,

I heard a jackal and something shined.
Caw, caw, the birds overhead; caw, caw, the whole world a Christening.
Neon lightning.
                                                      I need to return to learn the word no.


I spend my formative years looking for synonyms but find none.
So many searches — look at the thistle on my skin, look at the bone breaks --
                                                                                                                                        unfruitful. Lost one
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self along the way, gained others; a Matryoshka doll.
                                                                   I became what was to become.
                Moon bait. Honeysuckle shoot.

                Woman, yellow and sky bitten.

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Sara Kearns has been a runner-up for the Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize, and was a finalist for the New Issues First Book Award and the Walt Whitman Award. Her work can be read online in journals such as The Literary Review, DMQ Review, and Rogue Agent; her chapbook, Plastic Babies, is forthcoming from dancing girl press in early 2023. She teaches at the University of Pittsburgh.