Editors’ Choice Award Winner: Dia Calhoun
Dia Calhoun is the author of seven young adult novels, including two verse novels, After the River the Sun and Eva of the Farm (Atheneum, 2013, 2012). She has won the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children’s Literature; published poems and essays in The Nashville Review; The Writer’s Chronicle; EcoTheo Review; Grist Journal; and others. She is currently an assistant editor for The Nashville Review. She co-founded readergirlz, recipient of The National Book Foundation Innovations in Reading Prize, and taught at Seattle University, The Cornish College, and Stony Brook University. More at diacalhoun.com.
Edge of the River Perishing
When the only way across
the river is on the wings of extinct
butterflies, when heaven
on the far side is a field
of forced wheat rasping the Word
of the Holy Chemical god,
how do you move?
Like a hen with her head cut off
your vagus nerve staccatos
rage running
in the overwhelm
of what can you do
when everything needs saving?
Find a glass jar. Scrounge
the riverbank for survivors—
straggles of wire grass and bunch grass
to feed what you hunger
most to save.
Rockets scar the sky.
The moguls fleeing
for some far-away heaven.
In the left behind,
nurse a circle of earth
the breadth of your body.
Gather dung, worms, all the rot
you can splendor. Plant lavender.
And when it purples, spill gold
woodland skippers from the jar.
Let the butterflies dance,
let them drink the dazzle
of our heavenly bodies.
