by Cory Hutchinson-Reuss
What draws you out is what you’re here for
Your honeyed anguish and secrets
Your May Queen and Crone
You’ve come for the thicket
Found a home in its hollows
Had its briars in your hair
You’ve seen the bird’s glaring blood
high-pitched and strung
Its dismantled feathered mass
at another bird’s feet
like a nest made of aftermath
You’ve come to sing your voices
into the bramble
Throw them through the bars
You’ve come back to bend
the sky low, to call
that creature your self
Originally from Arkansas, Cory Hutchinson-Reuss received her PhD in English from the University of Iowa, and now lives and writes in Iowa City. Her work has recently appeared in The Offing, Superstition Review, wildness, Glass, Pangyrus, and The Missouri Review’s Poem of the Week feature. She has been a Best New Poets nominee and the recipient of the Lynda Hull Memorial Prize for Poetry from Crazyhorse. She volunteers in the Writers Workshop at Oakdale Prison and serves as a poetry reader for The Adroit Journal. Seed-Purse, a chapbook of poems and visual art made in collaboration with book and paper artist Giselle Simón, is forthcoming from PromptPress.