Yellow Butterflies by Julie Sellers

Gossamer wings
shiver around my ankles, knees—
momentary flickers of sunlight
that spring from my dusty steps
and glisten on waves of three o’clock heat.
Around me,
everything plays in August slow-motion,
everything…
except the nervous hearts around my legs,
the fluttery wings within my chest.
Yet I continue numbly on,
surrounded, inundated
by yellow butterflies,
forbidding myself to question
the motive for their dance.

~ Julie Sellers

(Originally published in Sunflower Anthology. Ed. Bryan Penberthy, Jonathan Holden, and Quoc Nguyen. Vol. 1. Manhattan, KS: Ag Press, 1996. 40. Print.)

Julie Sellers is Assistant Professor of Spanish at Benedictine College. Julie has published in CAPPER’S, Kanhistique, New Works Review, and Troika. She was twice the winner of the K-State Alumni Association’s Nonfiction Writing Contest. Julie’s second book, Bachata and Dominican Identity, is forthcoming as a bilingual text from McFarland (2014).

Guest Editor Al Ortolani’s poetry and reviews have appeared in Rattle, Prairie Schooner, New Letters, The Writer’s Almanac, and the New York Quarterly. He has published several collections of poetry. His Waving Mustard in Surrender (NYQ Books) was short-listed for the Milt Kessler Poetry Book Award from Binghamton Univesity. Paper Birds Don’t Fly was released by New York Quarterly Books in April of 2016. His poems been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. He has served on the Board of Directors of the Writers Place, The Brick Mountain Foundation, The Little Balkans Press, and is currently a member of the Board of the Woodley Press at Washburn University in Topeka.