Kierstin Bridger

Boundary Breach
 
Pick up the button hole
or eye of needle
with hard squint
see inside
salute the high sun
see us lucid but listing
hands open
 
I can conjure us
like that
dip of oar
the silvered pond
interruption of glass
the canoe– our reflection in mad
Van Gogh dashes–
un-mired by melt
we sit quietly in memory
waiting for an August noon
of yarrow perfume,
sweet sting of thistle
leading us there
 
Meanwhile the dirge of March
a snow shoe pace
melting ice, metal rasping the edges
anxious grass and granitic snow
fish writhing back to life
below the frozen surface
translucent; thin enough
to crack
with a spoon
a thimble
with a tap
without you
 
Solace in a half muddy marsh
This hard, narrow focus
as close
As I’ll ever be
to having you back
 
 
 
 
Kierstin Bridger lives in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado. She is the 2011 winner of the Mark Fischer Poetry Prize. Kierstin’s work can be found The Porter Gulch Review, Smith magazine 6 Words about Work, Bricolage, UW Women’s Voices, and inStripped: A Collection of Anonymous Flash Fiction from PS Books, a division of Philadelphia Stories. She can also be found online at the best of Nail Polish Stories, a tiny and Colorful Literary Journal, Telluride Inside and Out. She was a finalist for 2011 Haiku Year in Review by Broadsided Press. Forthcoming award winning poetry in the June issue of Memoir (and). Occupoetry will feature her poem, “You Occupy the Field “on May 7, 2012. She is pursuing an MFA at Pacific University.
 



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