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a literary journal published by the Black Earth Institute dedicated to re-forging the links between art and spirit, earth and society

Section 4

Shanna Compton


Desert Valley in Bloom
 
Desert Valley in Bloom By Shanna Compton Are we at last awash friends and unknowns adrift in the glare inwardly inhospitable each lone star an isolate smudge of light or, as the prophet said we’re soaking in it In the recent past firemen combed the nearby ponds as every commercial flickeringly promised everyone the body part and parcel of the Black Sea Everyone who left him in the street for hours no vapor stranger all red tape a stranglehold In the desert cluster birds and the carton of Earth yet thrums and brims with green and eerie rainfall Our poor cluster of void custom We were no good as flocks in among the milky debt debris We overwatered and overpruned And yet ominously we put our petals out For when the last flamingo over the misplaced ice floes at last expires she will note it in a raucous song And all faint stars their blue retire in a streak rose gold a gathering of tenuous strands so heavily pendant petal-scented, once civilized once ours
 
 
 
Shanna Compton‘s books include Brink, For Girls & Others, Down Spooky, Gamers, and several chapbooks (including two via the Dusie Kollektiv). A book-length speculative poem called The Hazard Cycle is forthcoming. Recent work can be found in Court Green, Sink Review, Barn Owl Review, and the new Tender Buttons Press anthology Please Add to this List: Teaching Bernadette Mayer’s Sonnets & Experiments. She is the founder and publisher of the Bloof Books collective.

 

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