
the college girl asked me
Devon Ora

Devon Ora teaches writing in the Mountain West and is still an undercover queer in Bibleland. You can find her work in Contrary Magazine. Follow her on twitter here and instagram here.

The book of Or
Angeline Schellenberg
a found poem from The Book of Orchids
Beyond astonish, desolate deep waters
evolve the remarkable, bewilder-gripped:
the way we see faces.
Embrace vines, depend hotly.
Only embryo, without root or stem.
Most, but not all, become.
Nature exchanges need with sugar.
The exception is all. Hence, the held-in-place
bear many scents.
Small bees closely resemble—
short-lived and vigorous—the lip curved.
Give its name. Reddish over rot,
dust-like wings disperse dense rain
where there is little wind
—to drift: fleshy, free.
The cup turned inward.
Angeline Schellenberg’s collection of linked poems about raising children on the autism spectrum, Tell Them It Was Mozart (Brick Books, 2016), won three Manitoba Book Awards and was a finalist for a ReLit Award. In 2019, she published three chapbooks and was nominated for The Pushcart Prize and Arc Poetry Magazine’s Poem of the Year. Angeline hosts Speaking Crow—Winnipeg’s longest-running poetry open mic. Her latest book is Fields of Light and Stone (University of Alberta Press, 2020). She enjoys talking to dogs and eating other people’s baking. angelineschellenberg.wordpress.com