by Alan Bern
night crescendo beneath foothills
the great horned owl sings to you, a hoot as delicate and hard to find as a heartbeat with your ear against heartskin. there’s nothing to be afraid of. something in you craves her stories, to be caught in her escape. the nest she was born into long since washed from the trees. her call like a murmured sigh. there’s nothing to be afraid of. the voice of the wind rattles and rages the glass of the westward windows before darkness creeps in, before cold. deershapes are silently munching the brittling leaves of the wild apple tree across the road. coyotes cry to each other beneath mountain swell. there’s nothing to be afraid of. you can feel that worry of bear, her shadow looming, imagine her slow stumbly walk down from the foothills, lured by the husks of those same wild apples scattered in the field. tree leaves ripple in the dark, the sound like rising ocean waves. a thousand miles to the nearest sea, an invisible riptide pull that could wash us all clean again. the wind aching, howling, demanding to be let in. there’s nothing to be afraid of.
Jill Kitchen’s work appears in Ecotone, HAD, Parentheses Journal, The Penn Review, Pidgeonholes, Poet Lore, Radar Poetry, Rust & Moth, The Shore, SWWIM, Tahoma Literary Review, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Whale Road Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Boulder, Colorado where she can be found rollerskating on the creek path searching for great horned owls. Twitter: @jillkitchen Instagram: @msjillkitchen.
Retired children’s librarian Alan Bern has published three books of poetry and has a hybrid fictionalized memoir, IN THE PACE OF THE PATH, forthcoming from UnCollected Press. Recent awards include: Winner, Saw Palm Poetry Contest (2022); Honorable Mention, Littoral Press Poetry Prize(2021). Recent and upcoming writing and photo work include: CERASUS, Thanatos, The Hyacinth Review, DarkWinter, and Mercurius. Alan is a published/exhibited photographer, and he performs with dancer/choreographer Lucinda Weaver as PACES: dance & poetry fit the space and with musicians from Composing Together. Lines & Faces, his press with artist/printer Robert Woods: linesandfaces.com. https://www.instagram.com/abobern/ https://twitter.com/AlanBern1/ https://www.facebook.com/alan.bern.1.