Motherlands II

Daughter packs a suitcase.
She fills it tenderly:
candlesticks, linens, anything
of this life that fits.

A bundle of rosemary,
bedsheets, leaving
a space the shape
of a cage, the simple
brown bird she knows
will not survive
the ocean voyage,

won’t survive until
the home where she must
live while her husband
works in copper mines.

She calms its panic,
this bird from the trees,
calms its slamming heart,
her fingers pressed to feathers,
and she closes the wire door,
a stowaway, a secret,
a weathered map,
leading back home.

ABOUT THE POET

Amber Edmondson is a poet and book artist who lives in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, near Lake Superior. Her work has appeared in Border Crossing, Menacing Hedge, and Stirring: A Literary Collection, among others. Her first chapbook, Darling Girl, is available from dancing girl press.

ABOUT THE COVER

"Navigating the Highlands" is a collagraph print, 30x22 inches, by Mary Woodworth.

Mary Woodworth has worked in several artistic mediums starting out as a fiber artist, publishing poetry both regionally and nationally, and participating in somatic education and performance as a dancer. Her most recent visual work uses the collagraph technique, printing from plates created through a collage of textures, to evoke mysterious and monumental landscapes.

OTHER BOOKS

Darling Girl (dancing girl press, 2016)