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.
AMY PENCE
You know . that winter . after the fall of our displacement . after Harvey . and Irma . after Maria . water glutting the streets . we were stacked in a suites hotel with adjusters and contractors from out of state . entire families with dogs . & few of us - alone . we passed each other in the hall . the carpet dank from boots scuffing up stairs . that fall I knelt on the bathmat and cried each day for 37 days . in that mid-grade impersonal hotel . you know . that winter of mudslides . after the fires of Napa Valley . after the shootings at a concert in Las Vegas . where arms were thrown over the ones they loved . arms thrown . in the evenings men gathered at the tarped pool with beers . contrails etched a weakening sky . they sat on plastic chairs playing guitars. sometimes a uke . and sometimes that humming fool, the harmonica . I looked down on their heads bent in a rough circle . some balding . some with ragged ponytails . I opened the window to hear that sound . grief for what we lost . what we’re losing . let’s say we are shipwrecked . let’s say we are fools . climate change, inertia . we pass each other in the halls . avert our eyes . because we are exposed . because we didn’t see it coming.
Without you, my dreams have coarsened, become
more prophetic. Indifferent even. As
you, that last morning in the bad hotel, boxy
neon wall tags signaling what was inevitable.
A morning’s dull commute under arching
trees—driving into what I mistake for
a sunrise apricoting the sky, then the
intersection. Cars aflame, folding
into the dung beetles of the apocalypse.
Commentary from the dream watcher: Remember
the fires we created? Unnatural and
racing to their source? You came to my aid once,
the two of us flaring—powers transforming. Then
the planet’s roll and shift into cinders.
Amy Pence authored the poetry collections Armor, Amour, The Decadent Lovely, and the chapbooks Skin’s Dark Night and Your Posthumous Dress: Remnants from the Alexander McQueen Collection (dancing girl press). Her hybrid book [It] Incandescent (Ninebark Press) won the Eyelands Poetry Award in Athens, Greece. A full-time tutor in Atlanta, she’s taught poetry-writing at Emory University and in other workshop settings. Links to her work are on amypence.com.
