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

Stones and brambles
Jennifer MacBain-Stephens & Sarah Lilius

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FLOORED

Bending genres floor me into the wood paneling,
seep into the slight grain, I am soundless
and shrunken down to a size
to match the roaches and silver beetles.
Their senses capture my smell and scraggly skin legs.
I scratch away insects peeling back the shells
to see the soft likeness of a torso made to scrub
away dirt, to absorb the earth’s properties of tears,
labor, and compromise. Every breath exhausted
but still booming into the air where my decisions
are bursts of light sparking choices into the atmosphere.
Finally, I am the erratic universe looking down on myself
chanting, turn this away, rise up, swerve, ask.

NECK

A slope I’ve slid down
With my fingers
Seemingly sturdy but I feel the pulse
Of life at the jugular, easy to interrupt
Or change it’s rhythm
Consistent like a perfect
Thunderstorm, rain water
Droplets across the skin
I don’t want to dry them but
I see the transparency in
How fragile this parcel of land is
The red and brown tones like
The desert, eager tattoos
Etched in the sand then
Blow away tiny particles
Into wind and ocean
Scratched into concrete
Later we look for our initials
Another slide down skin of
Cement harder, the lines
Etched in for eternity

JULY GARDEN

The rapture was filled with stones and brambles,
She hiked up her skirt and dove into the squish of lost
promises and regret, mosquitoes biting her ankles,
the Hostas enveloping eternity.
This garden, a workplace for her flowing hair
to fall among the foliage, such blonde, a color of the sun
disappears in the glare of day, the burning heat in July
collects our distracted thoughts into the flow
of a sparrow’s wing.
Animals that take flight send her thoughts with them,
messages of despair and what resumes under
the forest floor cannot be lifted up: a cloud falls
to earth and dissipates unsent letters,
dissatisfaction held in the beak.
She gathers them, taking her time, she makes each damp word
warm and solid again.
She hunts for them under stones and stream,
opens mouths to fulfill their vowel
and consonant destiny.
The longer words always unveil
themselves as something they’re not supposed to strive for,
victory for emotional satisfaction.
The crank turns the wheel underwater
and the dam brings strife,
a conversation between nature and the humans
who refuse to hide, they are flesh
against flesh, she knows time is nearing an end.
Birds migrate to other continents only to find waste,
no food for miles and the moon,
no longer pale but burning red,
an absent sun.

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Jennifer MacBain-Stephens went to NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and now lives in Iowa where she is landlocked. Her fifth, full length poetry collection, Pool Parties is forthcoming from Unsolicited Press in 2023. She is also the author of fifteen chapbooks and enjoys exploring how to blend creativity with nurturing the earth. Recent work appears in The Westchester Review, Cleaver, Dream Pop, and Grist. She is the director of the monthly reading series Today You are Perfect, sponsored by the non-profit Iowa City Poetry. Jennifer’s website →

Sarah Lilius is the author of the full-length poetry collection, Dirty Words (Indie Blu(e) Publishing 2021) and six chapbooks including GIRL (dancing girl press, 2017) and Traffic Girl (Ghost City Press, 2020). Some of her publication credits include the Denver Quarterly, Court Green, Fourteen Hills, Boulevard, Massachusetts Review and New South. Sarah’s website →