All night she cries out for me.
Icebergs rasp her ship’s
wooden flanks. Her arms, benumbed,
can no longer brace
a caving fissure.
When she molds herself
a face of damp sand
it avalanches, burying
her feet. All night this anguish
of grappling and failing, crumbling
and remaking. As if she’s kissed
hot iron, her bitten lips blacken.
When morning comes
I go to her. The curve of her forehead
cools my palm like a forsaken egg.
A shockwave of fear pricks out
through my skin. How could I forget
my child can be taken, can die
before she wakes?
Then she opens her eyes,
blinks back the sun flowing
around me.
You are so beautiful, she says.
Like a girl with daisies growing at her feet.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 26, Issue 1.
Karen Holmberg’s two poetry volumes are The Perseids (winner of the Vassar Miller Prize/University of North Texas Press) and Axis Mundi (winner of the John Ciardi Prize/BkMk Press). In addition to poetry, she publishes lyric essays and art criticism, appearing in At Length, Tupelo Quarterly, and the Notting Hill Editions Prize anthology. Her first young adult novel, The Collagist, won the 2021 Acheven Prize. She teaches British Literature, poetry writing, and letterpress printing at Oregon State University, where she is on the MFA in Creative Writing faculty.
See all items about Karen Holmberg
