Meredith Clark writing for Swallow Me

artworks by Leon Finley, photos by Brianna Wray

View swallow me exhibition 

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​excerpts from Eight Bodies
 
 
3.
 
The third body absented itself. It stood on the street corner saying “here, you walk north and I’ll walk south.”
 
 
4.
 
The fourth body became, for a moment, everything it touched. It went through the world like a scrim this way, not being seen.
 
The fourth body was a round rock by the river. The fourth body was pastoral. In summer, it turned green.
 
The fourth body knew that all of this is lent. “Just for now,” it murmured wherever it went.
 
I could not tell you where that body was seen last. It had been something else for so long, you could look right through. Like glass.
 
 
5.
 
The fifth body fell in. The fifth body came up gasping, but did not swim to shore.
 
It is possible to see, in looking back, that body wanted more.
 
It split the surface of the pond again and again. It stirred up the silt. It floated. And it dove. It drank the air like milk.
 
 
6.
 
The sixth body had been trying threads to things all its life.
 
The sixth body pulled and everything moved. The body found its knife.

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Meredith Clark is a poet and writer, whose work has received Black Warrior Review's nonfiction prize, and been named a finalist for both the 2017 Tarpaulin Sky Book Prize and the 2017 Noemi Press Book Award. Her poetry has appeared in the Dusie Kollektiv, and Poetry Northwest. These days she writes about trees, bodies, fragments, and the uncategorizable.