Inheritance
Kate O'Donnell
Did mothers always try to press on their daughters the itineraries of which they
themselves had dreamed? -The Year Of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion
I almost drop the book,
Pages fly shut through my shaking hands.
Across the table my mother stares
Out the train window. I match
Her gaze and my mind reels,
Wildflowers and hills fleeing far
Too quick to focus, my eyes scatter,
My soul sinks back through the cushioned seat
Up into the scattered air. I fix on a hawk,
Unmoving on the highest branch, ready to snap
Its beak, shred tomorrow with a single talon.
I will see him again when the train stops, watch
Ticks, lights flash and my head snaps
Shut. I misplaced my agenda but my mother
Will gladly read me hers. I feel the press
Of plans but I will not hear her words.
She asks where I am headed and the movement
Of my feet will be the only answer.
Kate O’Donnell is completing her studies in Poetry and Sociology at Northwestern
University. While born and raised in Chicago, she has always felt most at home in the
mountains or at sea. She can be found on Twitter @kate1od.
Body Psalm
Audrey Gidman
—& think of wilderness how it has suffered.
Bone flower-
pushing through skin; a spine
of mountains.
Eyes as lilies in the valley watching
women walk
like trees.
Eyes looking
for god
in other eyes. Holding out their cups
for
the houses
of the old tongue. Not ruined temples, just
these clay hands. A mortar
& pestle. Moss. Milk-
weed.
Audrey Gidman is the 2018 recipient of the Elyse Wolf Prize and author of the chapbook, body psalms, forthcoming from Slate Roof Press. Her work can be found in Q/A Poetry, mutiny! magazine, Confrontation, Slippery Elm, The Rush, and elsewhere. She received her BFA from the University of Maine Farmington. Instagram: @audrexe