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.
BRYANA JOY
Stampedes are a dime a dozen. Any old day
something toothed can cast just one wisp of shadow
and in a snap the earth’s throat is full of thunder.
Bye-bye, undusty air! See you later, Reason!
Did you know a herd of rhinos is called a crash?
That smash isn’t special. It’s what horned things do.
Even walruses poured onto the beach like
pink jugs of blubber will startle for crow-call,
peel out. One in ten won’t pull through that
flippered thrash, that boil of whisker and tusk.
No ivory-bearer is immune and I think I too
have pandemonium pulsing in my capillaries. I too
have tasted that longing to make a mad dash.
If I see one more fogging canister whetting the air
of a street lined with poster boards and little people
I might not sit tight. Somewhere some woman
is saying you don’t believe me? and lurching, all the
lights switching off in her brain. In Yemen,
babies are as gaunt as winter trees. We’re not
meant to seal our ears to all this bleating.
Reindeer calves are born dark, their first fur
optimal for hiding out. Like all small young things,
they’re at risk—but reindeer do danger differently.
Their reply to cracked twig or plucked bowstring
is not streak, not charge, but cyclone—a great
sweet twirl, a vast eddy in honor of those without
antlers. Their spiral of head and hoof says
there’s something numbers can be good for.
When you watch that twist tightening on the tundra
you’ll know what kind of storm I want us to be.
Victorian women were warned to expect a tooth loss
for each baby they wrang out of that tired pink canal.
Gain a child, lose a tooth! medical wisdom and matrons said,
implying that, while grim, it was more than a fair trade.
As a medical profession, dentistry was a late bloomer, a
somewhat frivolous field. Barbers, after all, were already
doing a fine job plucking by lamplight the bared gums
of wailing patients who were bolted to their chairs.
My Yorkshire friend tells me it was once considered a
handsome thing for a father to fund the full removal of
his marriageable daughter’s teeth. And I mean, who
doesn’t want the most hassle-free bride they can find?
After the Battle of Waterloo, the price of false teeth
plummeted. I often think about those acres of rigid blue
bodies, each plundered gum ragged, and how in every
age there have been people saying suck it up, buttercup.
On Monday a surgeon with an unusually high number of
As in his name extracted impacted molars from my little
sister’s mouth. When she came to, she cried and dribbled
blood full of bubbles, but felt ordinary in only an hour.
On Tuesday news reached us that Dr. Alaaaldin Radwan
had hydroplaned on the wet highway and hit a tree, a
thing that happens. I am frightened every day but have
determined to be one of the people saying we can do better.
Been thinking a lot about People:
how fragile we each are, but it's a secret.
Shhh don’t tell
anyone you meet that you’re little
also, that even the moon is nothing
but (keep your voice down) a battered stone.
Each day I pull a shirt over my chest
aware that this could be the sunup with my undoing
sitting in its mouth but I don’t say this I say
Goooood Morning!
Most of the time we can’t talk about
what’s making us who we are:
slammed doors, the walls that thicken
between rooms in a ticking house
in everyone the little mouth whimpering
love me, the big mouth saying watch this
the lies we’ve been told about all the
big things: mostly our nation and sex
God not picking up though we ring and
ring—no one’s certain he ever has
If I’m asking for anything
I’m asking for a light breeze, a finger flick.
I’m asking for just one playing-card to go flying.
Oh, other Person, let’s be roofless together
under our one moon’s borrowed light
as long as it lasts.
Bryana Joy is a writer, poet, and painter who works full-time sending illustrated snail mail letters all over the world. She also mails monthly new poems to subscribers in a postal poetry project called Puzzle Pieces. Her poetry has appeared in over three dozen literary journals, and is forthcoming in Midwest Quarterly and Iron Horse Literary Review. She has lived in Turkey, East Texas, and England, and currently resides in the Lehigh Valley in Eastern Pennsylvania. Find her at www.bryanajoy.com or on Twitter and Instagram at @_bryana_joy.
