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.
KRISTY BOWEN
We thought we were digging out, but we were digging in. Rigging the gages and resetting the clock. The foxes were alarmed at our indifference. In their tiny boxes, they watched us, year after year, until our bodies grew larger than our houses could hold. We lived for years that way, spilling out of windows and into the rivers, smoke collecting in our hollows. What could we tell you of the lives of such creatures? Such treacherous limbs? The butterfly that flapped its wings not in Asia, but in our lungs, and birthed the hurricane. How it spun like sugar in the hand of a girl who crashed through the honeysuckle bushes and trampled the marigolds. What could we tell you of her life through bits of doll and fallen sheetrock? The order of her bones? The holes in her teeth?
If I name it, I can have it. Can lather it in the tub and tuck it into bed. Dead or alive, it makes a pretty picture. All night, I waited for the names to come to me and all night they resisted. Twisted in the branches and got stuck on the fence. I went to rescue them, and they tangled in my hair. What gorgeous corpses. What pretty disasters. All night, they sang in the rafters, and all night, I yearned. Couldn't sleep until every wing was pinned to a board and every mouth stuffed with paper. The gap between the word and the thing strung together like dolls.
A writer and book artist, Kristy Bowen is the author several zine, chapbook, and artist book projects, as well as several full length collections of poetry/prose/hybrid work, including SALVAGE (Black Lawrence Press, 2016) and MAJOR CHARACTERS IN MINOR FILMS (Sundress Publications, 2015). She lives in Chicago, where she runs dancing girl press & studio.
