by Leigh Chadwick
Legs and everything above them. Spread angel in an open field. Voice pointing toward the sky. Blades of grass tickling the back of her neck. Blades of grass making her legs itch as she blows on a dandelion, watching tiny clouds form just inches from her lips. Sweat down her chest. August thighs. Then, the moon and the stars and her finger stretching toward heaven as she counts the dots freckled gleam. She loses count before she can make it to infinity. She knows some words are too big to mean anything. Still, she stretches her finger further into the sky, convinced she won’t lose count this time.
Leigh Chadwick is the author of the chapbook, Daughters of the State (Bottlecap Press, 2021), Her debut full-length collection of poems, Wound Channels, and her novel, Pretend I Am Real, will be simultaneously released by ELJ Editions in February of 2022. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Salamander, Heavy Feather Review, Indianapolis Review, and Milk Candy Review, among others. She is a regular contributor at Olney Magazine, where she runs the “Mediocre Conversations” interview series. Find her on Twitter at @LeighChadwick5. This is How We Learn to Pray, a Poetry Coloring Book (in collaboration with Steph Kirsten, illustrator) is forthcoming October 2021.
Emerge Literary Journal 