• HOME
  • ABOUT
  • VOLUME 22
  • PAST VOLUMES
  • SUBMIT
the salal review
  • HOME
  • ABOUT
  • VOLUME 22
  • PAST VOLUMES
  • SUBMIT

For Rebekah, the poet

Christopher Tower
While I read your poems,
your words
slick the inside of my head,
like water rings from stone's throw.

As I read, I feel
the same way I do as when silky rain
that coasts through sky

and touches my face.
It's like the edges of leaves
that delicately scratch my skin
as I pass through a thicket.These feelings move something within me
with more force than stone.

And after reading your poems,
I cannot find sleep.
I hear stone falling on stone,
first one,
then another,
then an entire hill
as it fills a ravine,
thousands of flat, round stones,
smoothed and darkened
by time that never passes
but surrounds us, waiting.

And I want to echo back
the spell of your language,
but I cannot capture the ten thousand
things that it is.

My head fills with fevers

of wild flowers,

congesting with the smells of ditches

clinging to the back of my throat,
remaining,like the last kiss before a departure.

After reading your poems,
I know the sounds hollowing out their homes in the dark;
I know the time the rose

needs to sing itself open;
I know the name of the truth.
The Salal Review is published annually by the students of Lower Columbia College enrolled in Arts Magazine Publication. Copyright @2020 and @2021 The Salal Review and the individual contributors. No portion of the publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the express permission of the individual contributor.
 
The Salal Review is a non-profit publication for the sole benefit of the community and is not available for purchase.
Proudly powered by Weebly
  • HOME
  • ABOUT
  • VOLUME 22
  • PAST VOLUMES
  • SUBMIT