STIRRING
Founded in 1999, Stirring is one of the oldest continuously publishing journals on the internet.
Stirring is an electronic quarterly journal.
Founded in 1999, Stirring is one of the oldest continuously publishing journals on the internet.
Stirring is an electronic quarterly journal.
CAMERON HARAMIA
I plant all my grief around a penny.
The penny tries to contain my grief
but it shows up as mold.
Not even my misery can look shiny—
not even on the least valuable
coin. But I know where other
green things have found a home.
I leapt into that abandoned waterfall,
waiting outside the Cheesecake Factory,
age 9 but the adult of my cousins.
So many coins
I could have built a library of tears.
My grandma to grieve, my 9 year old
sorrow. Grandma granted me
green beanie babies, where I planted my
joy in three states. The first state: a promise
of future athletic zen. The second:
a hope of eternal gerbil jump roping.
The third: a gliding about the walls of crooked
picture frames—me the cutest, most determined
eyebrows. I place the moldy penny in
the mouth of my green dragon.
I tell it not to swallow.
Just hold it there, a meeting
between past happy, present hardly, present
present. The dragon’s eyes can’t hold
up the green. The penny spills
onto the rollercoaster, lets out
a harrowing shriek & crashes through my childhood
window. All my cousins are adults now.
All my grandmas deceased.
Cameron Haramia is a California-born Hoosier, who can be found on the dancefloor. He’s danced his way to Memphis, México, and marine animals. Haramia’s poems have appeared in Rogue Agent, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, The Indianapolis Review, & elsewhere.
