I was repetition & undercover
raised on fear of god’s wild leg
no one told me
I was already inseparable from One Life
to another I dream myself
rising from the days’ sheet of dimness
my borders ringing [what I’m here for]
her voice, a bright incision, oxygen blue : a girl’s bone found in a cave
prehistoric torch-bone singing hinge
match head in the stone’s middle
pink & burning lung
where did god end and where did she begin
it’s an impossible
question to answer
& can’t be stolen
despite the newsfeed
it laughs
it prevents nothing but unleashes its presence
this ongoingness the light gallops
I flutter & heave shadow
I was a girl I am also
a gathering
from hand to wall
a sense of movement through the forms sweat on the flank
black, umber, red ochre
an echo of hooves & antlers
[rustling chorus, flex of muscle]
the powers that be should listen
they can’t imagine
being shaken free like water beads from fur
*Italicized portion modified from Richard Rohr’s “Daily Meditations,” from The Center for Action and Contemplation, 25 March 2018.
Cory Hutchinson-Reuss grew up in Arkansas and holds a PhD in English from the University of Iowa. Her poems have appeared or are set to appear in Drunken Boat, Four Way Review, Pangyrus, basalt, The Missouri Review’s Poem of the Week, and RHINO Poetry, among others. She has been a Best New Poets nominee and the recipient of the Lynda Hull Memorial Prize for Poetry from Crazyhorse, as well as a finalist for the Lexi Rudnitsky Poetry Prize from Persea Books and the Lindquist and Vennum Prize from Milkweed Editions. She lives in Iowa City and serves as a Poetry Reader for The Adroit Journal.