Alicia Elkort

Alicia Elkort (she/her) has been nominated thrice for the Pushcart, twice for Best of the Net and once for the Orisons Anthology. Her first book of poetry, A Map of Every Undoing, will be published in the fall of 2022 by Stillhouse Press with George Mason University. She has been published in numerous journals and anthologies and reads for Tinderbox Poetry Journal.  She works as a Life Coach and as an editor with Shiversong LLC. and lives in Santa Fe, NM. For more info or to watch her two video poems: http://aliciaelkort.mystrikingly.com/

The Never Child

Imagine a moose rising from a lake,
with a child in her antlers.

You know it is your child
by his eye color,

the same gray blue as yours.
He calls out Mama,

his arms raised. He’s swaddled
in mushroom leather & wears a crown

of blackberry twig—
every thorn has been removed.

Delirious with longing,
you are unable to reach your child.

You run to the sky, you run
to the mountain, you run past

streetlight & fig tree, & still
the moose rises from the lake

with your child in her antlers.
The child appears happy.

The child coos Mama.
When you realize you will never know

your child, you sit against an old fence-
post, & the moose returns

to the water. You decide
to live every hour

of every day until you die
in order to protect

the lake, the bog, the moose,
the sky, as if everything

you’ve ever loved
is coming to meet you.