Poetry

From Issue IV (2019)

Writing like trees, writing with trees

by MEREDITH STRICKER

toward that dark rest where fog takes the shape of ridgelines
my mind takes the shape of fog and each oak leaf
follows fractal coastline taking the shape of cells
if I paramecium the mica tongue
if I awaken the bees
if I sleep further into marrow
will foxes panting find shelter in broken
bracken near springs enough for all

split between myself and myself is human
consciousness walking down trail to rock-bed
wild currents, I’m yellow in places like a swallowtail
and would like to curl my sticky thin legs on a willow stem
wondering how ink is sap and how the eros of ink is
the literature of bee-hungry flowers

Kissena Trees | PAUL ANTHONY MELHADO
Gelatin silver print, 11 x 14 in., 2014

Meredith Stricker

Meredith Stricker is a visual artist and poet working in cross-genre media. She is the author of Our Animal, Tenderness Shore, Alphabet Theater, Mistake, and Anemochore. Her work will appear in the 2019 Best American Experimental Writing anthology from Wesleyan University Press. She co-directs a visual poetry studio, a collaborative that focuses on architecture in Big Sur, California, and projects to bring together artists, writers, musicians, and experimental forms. Her website is meredithstricker.com.

Paul Anthony Melhado

Paul Anthony Melhado is a Jamaican-born artist of Portuguese descent. He has been a Queens resident for over forty years and holds degrees in psychology, education, and art. His photographic technique involves the use of late nineteenth-century equipment, such as the view camera, and early twentieth-century processes that utilize film with traditional darkroom printing.