swifts  &  s l o w s · a quarterly of crisscrossings

shadows through a fence
Merridawn Duckler

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Controlled Burn Tone Poem

Field immediately opposite dense with flowers, light, etc.
Where we walk, the smothered grass.
Shadows through a fence.
Sound of our fall.
Step through crust.
Yellowed stalks rise.
What is this continuance?
No moment lies fallow.
Look. A Swallow.

Sonnet to Judd

For the dead, boxed.
For the new, encircled.
In the Texas heat, foxed.
In the maze, squirreled.
The light uncontained.
The air baffled.
Inside scatters rain,
outside proves no scaffold.
A sameness in dimension,
a uniqueness in said.
Shuddering scansion.
Corner of the soldered edge.
Excelsior Springs, Missouri.
Wind, wind in no hurry.

White Oak Refuge

First a hawk.
Then a plane modeled after a hawk.
Then a green river.
Then a green can.

Clogged arteries, my head stuffed with books,
the oaks spread and shake light into me.
Wherever one is fallen, none of the others can see.

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Merridawn Duckler is a writer from Oregon working cross-genre in poetry, prose and text-based installations. She’s the author of INTERSTATE (dancing girl press) IDIOM (Harbor Review, Washburn Prize) and MISSPENT YOUTH (rinky dinkpress). Her writing has been published widely in journals and anthologies. She won the Beulah Rose poetry prize from Smartish Pace, the Invisible City CNF contest, the Elizabeth Sloane Tyler Memorial Award from Woven Tale Press, and the 2023 Drama prize from Arts and Letters in Georgia. She’s an editor at Narrative Magazine and the international journal of philosophy Evental Aesthetics. She’s a member of Blackfish Gallery in Portland,Oregon. “Sonnet to Judd” was included in the Spirit Anthology from White Stage Publishing and “Controlled Burn Tone Poem” was in the tiny wren anthology, All Poems Are Ghosts.