by Karen Pierce Gonzalez
People Are Dying, People Are Coming Back
The skier, gone for six minutes
after a bad tumble, said you were like the snow:
a bright white light. The man whose heart
for a moment forgot to beat said you were darkness,
just darkness, and that he felt so cold. Then there was the boy,
no older than five, whom you caught briefly with your lure
of flu; when he managed to writhe off the hook,
he told his parents you looked like Jesus,
as well as a rainbow, as well as his grandmother.
Then, a young woman who hemorrhaged after birth.
When revived, she admitted to her husband she saw
nothing. No faces, colors, or shapes. No baby.
She was only capable of knowing. Knowing what?
Everything that mattered, there being so little of it.
Annie Przypyszny is a poet from Washington, DC pursuing an MFA in Poetry at the University of Maryland. She has poems published or forthcoming in Bear Review, Jet Fuel Review, Sugar House Review, Tampa Review, Atticus Review, Tupelo Quarterly, The Main Street Rag, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, The Champagne Room, The MacGuffin, Cider Press Review, and others. Instagram @pryps.
Karen Pierce Gonzalez is an intuitive artist who focuses primarily on elements found in nature. To date, 55+ art works, including collages in City Companions, a hybrid collaboration with poet Marcelle Newbold that recently won Hedgehog Poetry Press’s Little Black Book competition, have appeared in numerous literary journals/magazines. Six pieces have premiered as cover art for publications such as The Chestnut Review and Feral: A Journal of Poetry and Art. A 2022 National Arts Program (USA) feature artist, her 3D assemblage pieces have been shown in several Pacific West Coast galleries and museums.