Erin M. Bertram is a fellow/TA in the MFA Writing Program at Washington University in St. Louis. She writes for The Vital Voice and edits shadowbox press, which publishes hand-made chapbooks by underrepresented writers. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Bloom, Columbia Poetry Review, CutBank, MiPOesias, Natural Bridge, and The Marlboro Review. With Sarah Lilius, she co-authored the chapbook Here, Hunger (NeO Pepper Press, 2007). Body Of Water recently won the 2007 Frank O’Hara Award Chapbook Competition and will be published by Thorngate Road in late 2007. Her chapbook Alluvium was published by dancing girl press, 2007.
[Travelogue (Breviary)]
Darkling, listen.
& climbed, dazzling, oblivious, inside.
Stumbled, blinking, amid a bevy of indecision.
Amid the burrow of a hand.
One part torpor, two parts swarm.
Am coalesce, racked & eager. Am surfeit, black & rising,
Smoke tangling the trees.
Am adrift. Drifting.
Tie the proper knot. Slow now, tie it.
Hope for harvest. For soil. For the birds’ relentless song.
We cut our losses & moved camp,
Gathered our gains in brimming cups, & left
Detritus strewn in florid patterns across the bending grass.
River lapping an all but unmade bed,
Slapping its sides gently. Repeatedly.
There is a story trapped inside your body.
The moment between wake & rise. Darkling, the river calls.
The river is calling. To the terrible sea. Do not let go
My hand.