by Eartha Davis
I.
Admit, first, that you have to
love — we are
what we
gentle / say
sleeper, dreamer,
string yourself
to a soft
name / rest
your cheekbed &
the wound
will not
come
II.
Earth
is a hemisphere of
thereness / she bows
her eyelids / stains
the day with
love’s fingers, then
fruits —
III.
The chest
worships
heart / picks her up &
blows, a fossilised
hope / the
ribfall, the
treefall, a streak
of feather
where the birds
promised to
carry you / float
over me, love
says, & I will hold you
like
water
Eartha Davis placed second in the 2022 Woorilla Poetry Prize Youth Section and was nominated for Best of the Net 2023, with work published or forthcoming in Wildness, Frozen Sea Journal, Revolute, Stirling Review, Arboreal Magazine, Minarets, jmww, Hummingbird Blink, Sour Cherry Magazine, and Eunoia Review, among others.
Emerge Literary Journal 