Poetry

From Issue I (2016)

Dusk

by MAGGIE BLAKE BAILEY

The rabbits here are swimmers,
spend their days submerged
in shallows, just ears and eyes
breaking the surface of brackish
water ringed in sea grass.

Sometimes, when I’m wading,
fur brushes my legs, a soft echo
of my mother’s white muff,
lined in white velvet, a richness
I stole from her closet and kept.

Come evening, you can measure
distance in the round, quiet bodies
of marsh rabbits come ashore:
brown nails studding the green grass,
fastening the ground to the road,

the road itself anchored to August
by a moon doused in brine.

Reservoir

by MAGGIE BLAKE BAILEY

We lower our July bodies
to immersion, some shell
of the world breaking open
to water, quiet in a way oceans
cannot grasp, a saltless float.

Here legs cut through to colder
layers, hair dreads, pale skin
flashes the language of must,
will, and watch me. Everything,
finally, a test of buoyancy.

Maggie Blake Bailey

Maggie Blake Bailey has published poems in The Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume V: Georgia; Tar River; Slipstream; and elsewhere. She has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize and her chapbook, Bury the Lede, is available from Finishing Line Press. Her website is maggieblakebailey.com.