small map

it was spring and all the blooming trees
were talking to me as if i was a red bird—
as if i should float with them and they would
keep me, hold me in their triangle of crabapple
limbs, fallen stone, thick creek water flowing
and bending around itself. i kept on walking,
retracing the same steps, and not getting found
or finding myself. as if i was trapped in a yellow-
white maze. no one to rescue me. my heart stuck
in its chamber pounding out its empty rat-tat-tat,
rat-tat-tat. i am not of the place i live. my spot
on the darkened earth. as if i believed i could get
back there. loss, this strange land i live in. no god
or whatever. to recognize or find me.

Ellen Stone advises a poetry club at Community High School and co-hosts a monthly poetry series in Ann Arbor, Michigan where she raised three daughters with her husband. Her poems have appeared most recently in Dust Poetry, Hobart, Mom Egg Review, Sheila Na Gig, Willawaw, on Verse Daily and in the anthologies, A Tether to This World, (Main Street Rag, 2021) and Choice Words: Writers on Abortion (Haymarket Books, 2020). Ellen is the author of What Is in the Blood (Mayapple Press, 2020) and The Solid Living World (Michigan Writers’ Cooperative Press, 2013). Her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart prize and Best of the Net. Lately, Ellen’s favorite sweet is strawberry rhubarb crisp.

… return to Issue 13.3 Table of Contents.