Three Poems
KNIFE
He says my language is a violence to him
How I text "yep" or "nope" in response to his questions
legit violence
The radiance in the woods today
THE EDGE OF THE SEA AT PALAVAS
You never cry
and you never turn
back for me.
I have to make a choice
each time: how do I paint you —
a figure on shore
waving his hat at the sea?
Or buried in the blue-grey wave?
The worst is feeling
I must spend my life
trapped inside a tree with you.
No other knife on me.
We never get anywhere
and when the clock strikes
you whisper
in hot rope breath
how you still have
something to teach me.
Cup
I left the knife in another poem.
Elaine Bleakney
Elaine Bleakney is a poet and writer living in the mountains of Western North Carolina. Her second book, Take the Exit Then Exit, is out from Understory Books. Her previous books include For Another Writing Back, an avant-memoir in lyric prose (Sidebrow Books, 2014) and the chapbook 20 Paintings by Laura Owens, an ekphrastic conversation (Poor Claudia, 2013).
Tara Wray
Tara Wray has spent more than twenty-five years working in photography, writing, and documentary film, and began painting in 2022. Her work has been shown at major venues including Lincoln Center, SXSW, and Kunst Haus Wien – Museum Hundertwasser in Vienna. A graduate of NYU and a high school dropout, she is the author of numerous photobooks including Too Tired for Sunshine and Year of the Beast, which blend humor, melancholy, and the absurdities of everyday life. Her recent paintings extend this autobiographical approach through simplified forms and emotionally charged color. She lives off-grid in rural Vermont with her filmmaker husband, their identical twin sons, and a blue-eyed rescue dog named Hula. When she is not making art, she works as a librarian.