Miracles & Wonder
Each morning’s mission: the body’s slow
rise. The super-sized heart. The built-in
cabinetry of the brain. The storage drawer
for the word petrichor, the smell of earth
after it rains. The resilience of the succulent
when there is none. The drive to go at all
when for days the news is the nation is buckling.
The chanting and the songs. The resistance &
counter calls. Even the bombs, the way they disperse
smoke on the street, dissipate into the evening air,
become memory. I have no remedy for living.
I only want to march into each waking day
as inventory commander, sight supervisor,
here to witness the astonishing. To log only
the miracle, the accumulating proof into
a long list of verifiable evidence. See? I’ll say,
when I encounter disbelief. According to this
immersive document, the wonder is we exist.
rise. The super-sized heart. The built-in
cabinetry of the brain. The storage drawer
for the word petrichor, the smell of earth
after it rains. The resilience of the succulent
when there is none. The drive to go at all
when for days the news is the nation is buckling.
The chanting and the songs. The resistance &
counter calls. Even the bombs, the way they disperse
smoke on the street, dissipate into the evening air,
become memory. I have no remedy for living.
I only want to march into each waking day
as inventory commander, sight supervisor,
here to witness the astonishing. To log only
the miracle, the accumulating proof into
a long list of verifiable evidence. See? I’ll say,
when I encounter disbelief. According to this
immersive document, the wonder is we exist.
Originally from Pennsylvania, Alicia Hoffman now lives, writes, and teaches in Rochester, New York. Author of two collections, her recent poems can be found in a variety of journals, including The Penn Review, Glass Poetry, Radar Poetry, The Shore, Journal Nine, The Watershed Review, A-Minor Magazine, Typishly, and elsewhere. Her new book, ANIMAL, was released this month by Futurecycle Press.
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About the artist, Natascha Graham: Raised simultaneously by David Bowie and Virginia Woolf, Graham lives with her wife on the East Coast of England where she writes fiction, non-fiction and poetry, as well as writing for stage and screen. Her play, How She Kills, was performed on BBC Radio Suffolk, and by The Mercury Theatre. Her second monologue, Confessions: The Hours has been performed by Thornhill Theatre, London. Since then, both How She Kills, and Confessions: The Hours have been selected by Pinewood Studios and Lift-Off Sessions as part of their First Time Filmmakers Festival 2020. Graham has been published in Acumen, The Sheepshead Review, Litro, Yahoo News and The Mighty, to name but a few, and also has an upcoming poetry anthology due for publication by Tall Lighthouse Press in early 2021.
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Natascha Graham
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