Ceridwen Hall

Autopilot

Awaiting snow, the earth is almost colorless.
Then a brief gleam from the pale fields: a silo

or tool. The highway pretends it will never end
so I follow its wide grey pledge. Windmills rest

motionless or turn slowly. Resisting what? Air
this morning is thin and thought-like. Ice covers

the edges of a pond, but not its center. The brain,
likewise, begins to narrow at speed, searches only,

the road, for its next anticipated creek or hillside.

Outdoors

A Witness tries to explain suffering to me—or something
about a God who loves, who therefore punishes. Injustice
and pain must exist; otherwise, what would be the point
of comfort? There’s a glossy leaflet to take, but I let the dog
pull me away and lie about my name because no language
seems adequate in spring. The sun is more light than warmth,
dangerous the way joy is: like sorrow uncontained. Every bud
threatens a bloom; branches wait for the wind to freeze again.

Ceridwen Hall is pursuing a PhD in creative writing at the University of Utah and reads poetry for Quarterly West. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Grist, Hotel Amerika, The Moth, Rattle, Tar River Poetry, and elsewhere.

from The 2River View, 22.1 (Fall 2017)

Read the 2RV now at 2River

Here in St. Louis, the temp is shooting up to nearly 100 degrees today, yet we have faith that autumn and a new issue of 2RV will fall this Friday with the certainty of a leaf! While you wait, enjoy this new poem from the upcoming issue.

Morgan Eklund

Thirteen

This—is how far away from my father
I feel tonight.
I am still thirteen.
I am thirteen years away from him.
He is thirteen years younger.

There—we haven’t aged a moment.
We are in between my brain and desire—
between expanding universes.
We are luminous.
Like the meridian.
Like hieroglyphics.

Not shadows on a wall.
Not shadows looking for peace.

Morgan Eklund has poems in the The Louisville Review, North American Review, and Whiskey Island. She recently received an Emerging Artist Award from the Kentucky Arts Council.

The 2River View begins its twenty-second year with new poems by Walter Bargen, Christopher Alex Chablé, Mary Crow, Morgan Eklund, Ceridwen Hall, Sarah Denise Johnson, Matt Mason, Frank Montesonti, Patricia Nelson, Phillip Sterling, Nina Sudhakar; and art by Thomas Park.

While you wait for the leaves to turn and fall, enjoy this poem from the upcoming issue.

Nina Sudhakar

We Are Not Made for Sea But for Sky

Mid-afternoon the waves pull back
the covers & force us to reckon with

the suddenly nude shoreline, exposed
grains & foolishly inscribed footsteps,

crustaceans reaching antennae into the
sunshine’s abyss. Rendering us all blinking,

half-blind, remembering how a day inevitably
finds us stripped naked at its end. It doesn’t

take much to recall the milkiness of an
underwater pulse, a vague & sweeping swell

like the world’s only truth glimpsed through
the clouded murk of a liquid curtain. The time

has come to hold our breaths, to swim for a
dim light in the distance, to throw the ocean

off our shoulders. I know we yearned for a
clean slice of oxygen, for unencumbered

breath. For the sacred placation of filmy
clouds, for that voidless, depthless expanse

of blue. Only beneath do I feel the low
throb-hum that turns float to churn, blur

to clarity, that tells me I’d do anything
to reach a solitary, untroubled surface.

2River begins its 22 year with 639 writers submitting for Fall 2017 issue of The 2River View. Long time readers know that each issue has always been limited to 10 or 11 poets, so accepting those writers is a difficult process.

Yet, 11 poets always stand out from the rest, and those appearing in the upcoming Fall 2017 issue of 2RV are Walter Bargen, Christopher Alex Chablé, Mary Crow, Morgan Eklund, Ceridwen Hall, Sarah Denise, Matt Mason, Frank Montesonti, Patricia Nelson, Phillip Sterling, and Nina Sudhakar.

Look for issue at www.2River.org on or about the fall equinox.