Thrush Poetry Journal
  • ABOUT
  • ARCHIVES
  • JANUARY 2023
  • SUBMISSIONS
  • AWARDS
  • MASTHEAD

Ashley Seitz Kramer

Under the Ancient Elm

You realize you are not 

  who you thought you were, but not in time 

to save the sparrow in the driveway 

  breathing fast. I see you park your bike 

under the ancient elm and linger there 

  for hours then years. I do not expect anyone else 

to knock on my door and bring in kindling

  I can use. The sky looks less and less 

like an open door anyone 

  could push open or pass through. 




Hugging the Ostrich

Your plush cheek
her pointy beak

Your smooth skin
her feather field

Her suspiciousness of your limbs
less and less awkward

You wrap your arms
around the flagpole of her neck

She is altogether a different country




Ashley Seitz Kramer has won numerous awards, including the Ruth Stone Prize, the Schiff Prize, and most recently the Utah Writers’ Contest. Her recent work is published or forthcoming in Tusculum Review, Connotation Press, Colorado Review, Western Humanities Review, The Burnside Review, Anti-, Parcel, Cimarron Review, Quarterly West, and The Southeast Review, among others. She taught college writing in Ohio for a decade and now serves as an Assistant Dean at Westminster College in Salt Lake City, Utah




Return to November 2013 Edition