which is not
quite a speech
act but
a reaching
lifting
across/thru
earth
possibility
like the club-winged
manakin who makes
of their wings an ass
clapping click click click
hauling sound
out of itsour chambered
silence via
spillt flesh
myour western signifying system
articulates itsour own failure
to be earth
disembodying-ing
the feelinglistening: click
speech lacks flesh
grammars cage
body
i am full of it
[lack]
a wren squawks (this is a trans. click
lation) teeming neath
my loam (sic)
iwe want to speak
heron my first
language
is the reason
the i is in this
poem
a corpse
grinding w fear
at the club
already hapless
maundering
for care & meaning
& truth is this poem a destruction of

earth

i disbelieve it is

solely this date in this year

i understand the space caesura-ing this poem

to be an open field

replete w migrating

sandhill cranes it is my duty

to study & listen to their epistemology plz join me for a while

the way they fill the field

like virgules
/ / / //// //

//// /// // //

//// /// //

//// /// /// ///

//// /// // //

//// /// //

//// /// /// ///

lifting off from the spell

of their longing lunging their gift & grizzle

of beak & red flummoxing the field

of gmo corn they blend into this river valley

a portal of ten thousand years

where they’ve rubbed their faces

w iron-mud this earth mask

they need the river & the meadow

& iwe need them until iwe be/come

the river & the field

again the animals iwe are

in coalition w the animals

iwe amare will be/

come hidden from meus

it is a dearth of imagination

such syllables make in lieu of the sound of wings click

words a simulation referent

emptinesses let meus racinate

w the winged ones here now there then

let a signifier stand as more than a

fallow metaverse

more than parking lots scabbed

over wetlands

Rose Zinnia is a writer living in Cleveland, Ohio. She is the recipient of the Ninth Letter Literary Award, the Vera Meyer Strube Award from the Academy of American Poets, & the Kraft-Kinsey Award from the Kinsey Institute. Her poetry manuscript, anarchic womb, was a finalist for the Nightboat Books Poetry Prize & a semifinalist for the Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize from Persea Books. Her writing appears or is forthcoming in Black Warrior Review, New Ohio Review, Foglifter, The Journal, Gulf Coast, Sycamore Review, Split This Rock, The Academy of American Poets (poets.org), Ninth Letter, West Branch, & elsewhere. Her work has been supported by residencies/workshops at Banff Centre for the Arts (Fiction), Kenyon Review Writers Workshop (Poetry), & the Tin House Writers Workshop (Fiction). She has taught creative writing & literary editing/publishing at Indiana University, where she received her MFA in Creative Writing.

Originally from Montreal, Fiona Ackerman is a painter living and working in Vancouver, BC. Since completing her BFA through Concordia and ECIAD, Fiona has exhibited internationally (Canada, USA, Europe, UK and Asia). She was longlisted for the Sobey Prize in 2015 and received an honourable mention for the Kingston Prize for Canadian Portraiture in 2009. Recent projects include murals in Vancouver, and a commissioned 10 minute video projection for the Facade Festival (Burrard Arts Foundation) which was projected onto the facade of the Vancouver Art Gallery.