![]() |
![]() |
Issue 10: | October 2021 |
Poem: | 163 words |
Listen and silent are made of the same letters, s for the winding road snaking through canyons i the ibis perched on a cow in the savannah l the languid stretch at the end of a day e the empty vase you will fill with tulips n the not you choose before acts of anger t the turn of the clock’s hour hand. I’ve paced pregnant in a hospital waiting for my cervix to open like the mouth of a god surprised by his own creation. I’ve given birth and wound through the snake-curves of streets, traveled to Belize where the ibis ate seed, days languid nursing on benches and winters empty of bloom. I have not repeated the same words when you frowned and I’ve turned hours into dust and bone when the empty silence transformed my body into children and I listened to birdsong louder than my voice and more beautiful than anything I could ever say.
is a poet and fiction writer in Boulder, Colorado, and lives with her two children, husband, and pets. Her books include the chapbook Beside Herself (Flutter Press, 2010) and three full-length collections: two from Word Tech Editions, Rust (2016) and Coming Up for Air (2018), and one from Pinyon Publishing, Occupied: Vienna is a Broken Man and Daughter of Hunger (2020), the latter of which won the Colorado Authors’ League Award for best poetry collection. Her poems have been published in Freshwater, KYSO Flash, The Columbia Review, The Comstock Review, The Denver Quarterly, The Pennsylvania Literary Journal, and numerous other journals and books. Her writing has been nominated five times for the Pushcart Prize.
An instructor of English at Front Range Community College, Ms. Dorsey also works as a writing coach, editor, tutor, and ghostwriter. In her free time, she swims miles in pools and runs and hikes in the open space of Colorado’s mountains and plains.
Author’s website: http://kikadorsey.com
Copyright © 2019-2024 by MacQueen’s Quinterly and by those whose works appear here. | |
Logo and website designed and built by Clare MacQueen; copyrighted © 2019-2024. | |
Data collection, storage, assimilation, or interpretation of this publication, in whole or in part, for the purpose of AI training are expressly forbidden, no exceptions. |
At MacQ, we take your privacy seriously. We do not collect, sell, rent, or exchange your name and email address, or any other information about you, to third parties for marketing purposes. When you contact us, we will use your name and email address only in order to respond to your questions, comments, etc.