a literary journal published by the Black Earth Institute dedicated to re-forging the links between art and spirit, earth and society
| how spring can be this | ||||
| ludicrously | lush | |||
| fat dark pink | ||||
| blossom | ||||
| the word | blossom | |||
| lily of the valley | ||||
| wafting history | ||||
| photos of | ||||
| heads shaved & | shoved | |||
| into what the shavers want us | ||||
| to see | no faces | |||
| not brother | not lover | |||
| not my heart | how | |||
| our power | turned | |||
| no plane | around | |||
| no human child | to cradle | |||
| in the year of our no lord | ||||
| 2025 | ||||
| in the month of April | ||||
| in the nation | United | |||
| spring’s velvet turning | juicing | |||
| spring’s pollen | ||||
| harbinger of horrors? | States | |||
| of the smallness & | brutality | |||
| we’ve become | of America | |||
not flag not banner
not resentment not whiteness
to not make of my white
body a furled
and tensed she-snake
waiting to strike
Sarah Browning is the author of Call Me Yes (FlowerSong Press, 2026), Killing Summer (Sibling Rivalry) and Whiskey in the Garden of Eden (The Word Works). Co-curator/host of Wild Indigo Poetry, she teaches with Writers in Progress and coaches writers one-on-one. Co-founding director of Split This Rock, Browning received the Lillian E. Smith Award and fellowships from the DC Commission on the Arts, VCCA, Yaddo, Porches, and Mesa Refuge. Recent poems have appeared in Poetry Northwest, Mid-Atlantic Review’s Voices of Disability portfolio, Bracken, and as a feature in The Schuylkill Valley Journal. She lives in Philadelphia.
Other works by Sarah Browning »
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