I’m a newborn giraffe, my slick legs shaking to standing for the first time. I’m a raw green snake that lost its skin. I’m not a happy camper. I’m a kitten skidding across the floor to the rushing wall. I'm fog that can't seem to let itself burn into iridescence. Do you see me in a storefront reflection? Do you think of me when you could get up, but won't? Do you wonder what “could” even is and how you can be so new and broken while the world cries in each crevice to fix it instead? Listen to the exhausted angel, straining to reach you, her hand your shoulder, asking the question. Hear the answering kestrel riding the jet stream, no effort, all effort to surrender to the sun, then the moon, each lifting up their reflected and reflecting faces, then bowing toward the dirt where everything begins.
Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, Ph.D., the 2009-13 Kansas Poet Laureate is the author of 23 books, including Miriam’s Well, a novel; Everyday Magic: A Field Guide to the Mundane and Miraculous, and Following the Curve, poetry. Her previous work includes The Divorce Girl, a novel; Needle in the Bone, a non-fiction book on the Holocaust; The Sky Begins At Your Feet, a bioregional memoir on cancer and community; and six poetry collections, including the award-winning Chasing Weather with photographer Stephen Locke. Founder of Transformative Language Arts at Goddard College, Mirriam-Goldberg also leads writing workshops widely.
Editor-in-Chief Laura Lee Washburn is the Director of Creative Writing at Pittsburg State University in Kansas, and the author of This Good Warm Place: 10th Anniversary Expanded Edition (March Street) and Watching the Contortionists (Palanquin Chapbook Prize). Her poetry has appeared in such journals as TheNewVerse.News, Carolina Quarterly, Ninth Letter, The Sun, and Valparaiso Review. Harbor Review’s microchap prize is named in her honor.
