Timber Journal

Many moons ago&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp and burst-grey there was the Earth&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp light-at-first until heavy&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp&nbsp with mankind’s sloughed off&nbsp&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbspskin cells collective weight&nbsp&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp collective waste a mass of blank&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbspfaces cycling through the same &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp...

I’ve climbed the rungs and arrived at 100 years, sharp as an ice pick and ready to boogie. I rent a party bus to Venus, planet of love, cause what rises up round my spidery limbs and stooped back are the people I love. So we buckle in and ride through the slick Milky Way. My father’s in the backseat crowned with black curls like a young rooster, swigging tequila next to Mom, alive here, her particles vacuumed from her urn and reassembled, edgy and shocked like her 80s hair.

No one comes with outstretched hands. So I store up more soft wisdom, kernels sticky with amnesia. Who will remember this burial by next fall? I’ve wandered remotely from the magnolia, and now we’re over. Gathered oats and half-truths that fit loosely into some other life. Roofs mistaken for shelter and windows for privacy. There are things I let slip downstream, pretending they don’t belong. Cedar ash. A deer’s beige muteness. Dripping aspens—a glamour I thought I didn’t need.

Abby Cheng, a current MFA candidate at the University of Washington, is a creative nonfiction writer born and raised in the Boise, Idaho area. Their essays weave themes of illness and disability, queerness, nature and spirituality, family, and identity. Abby’s work considers questions such as: What is unknown and why? When and how do personal histories create shared stories? And, if something is true in memory, in what ways does it become true in reality?

Driving alone across Blue Mountains, you pass hawks perched on power poles, in yellow larches, in the black crowns of fire-scarred pines. Outside Pendelton, a red-tailed hawk claims a billboard that threatens salvation through Jesus Christ. A kestrel gusts above the highway, flashing its speckled barring. It’s a moment you’d share. But you’re driving alone across Blue Mountains. Before Hermiston, a Swainson’s hawk atop an irrigation rig scans dead heath for rats and voles.

for its leaves, which are themselves made of repeating, infinitesimal leaves, the prototype of pointillism, the beauty, and of chainmail, the strength, and somehow I’m back to battlefields. It would be easy to fall into believing you don’t have a say in who you are.

In dreams a wilding creature gums a bone. Pooling around canid feet is rich broth like blood, wet bruising twigs and burying mice the way seracs drape alpinists in gravity. Animal presents bone. I accept. Zippered through with marrow it smells foreign, real, the bone acquires heavy size. Ballooning to the breadth of a bear, respirating like an angel went and lent it life’s iron compass.

Sarah E. N. Kohrs is a writer with 84 poems in journals worldwide, including: Arboreal Literary Magazine, Bluebird Word, Chariot Press, The Elevation, Kitchen Quarterly, Louisiana Literature, Philly Poetry Chapbook Review, and Rattle’s Poets Respond. She received the Peter K. Hixson poetry award and a Kingdoms in the Wild award for her chapbook, Chameleon Sky. Sarah has a BA from The College of Wooster and a Virginia teaching license.

*Poet’s Notes: ONE “A Blue Whale's heart is so big that a small child can swim through its veins.” —Dave Stopera, from 35 Completely Useless Facts You Need To Know Right Now, via Buzzfeed, 19 June 2013 TWO “Sweet tap dancing Jesus in a magenta gstring. You just broke my fucking heart.

[days like this: farsight wrapped by gauze that laves] birds' [wrapped to a smooth] shield murmuration, lettertight fold. [cloud, the violent of a still] predator spun circular. cacophony. [sky, menacing the rushed world.] visitors mutter I just love Santa Fe Style & pluck appropriation off hangers for their closets. [i'm not exempt from clutching another's garments. horizonline marks sight] a homeless man stands at median strips, dog coatswaddled at his side, spotted limbs bedtucked for warmth.