Poetry Excerpt: Bury Me in Thunder by moira j. — Our 2019 New Voices Fellow’s Debut
We are thrilled to announce that moira j.’s debut collection, Bury Me in Thunder, is out with Sundress Press! They’re generously letting us share this excerpt with you, the stunning “Rawhide for the Archer’s Knot.” Enjoy, and take home their collection here.
RAWHIDE FOR THE ARCHER’S KNOT
My aunt is running like a doe with an arrow
in her ribcage, her sides are streaked in cytoplasm
and platelets. The bone-sawed edges of the day
pierce past trees as we run from divine punishments.
We watch the sky begin to fall, with feathers fashioned
to look like bullets, but we keep walking towards the field,
where our uncles skin our legs to give us camouflage
among the salmon carcasses in the nearby riverbed,
We tried to make homes in the jaw of a bear,
where the angles of light through his teeth gave us heat
for the stove, and stories told with shadowed hands
that resembled skunks and lizards. The hunter dreamed
of standing on the edge of our beds, his weapon cracking our teeth,
collecting molars as cornmeal for bread and to spread in his fields,
his crops only imaginary bodies of food. Yet, here we are,
standing in the open meadow, waiting for the red freckle
to daub our hides, our ears pining for the whistle of released
tension in bowstrings. My aunt shivering with delight to run.
Moira J.
moira j. is a writer of Dził Łigai Si'an N'dee descent. They were the winner of the 2018 Pacific Spirit Poetry Prize and were Frontier Poetry’s 2019 Frontier New Voices Fellow. They are published/forthcoming in The Shallow Ends, PRISM International, and Black Warrior Review. They currently live with their partner in the occupied Massachusett homelands of Nutohkemminnit (Greater Boston, Massachusetts). Their debut poetry collection, “Bury Me in Thunder” (January 29, 2020) is out now with Sundress Publications. You can find more of their work at www.moiraj.com, and on Twitter @mxmoiraj.
