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.
JACQUELINE HUGHES SIMON
In the loud white noise of the airplane, I hear the murmur of all the voices I have
ever heard. Down below, the land at work. The water lies like stained wallpaper and a
cave-like cloud of rain, both terrifying and necessary, rains on the corn.
Beneath the cloud-cave, hieroglyphs mark the earth where land and water meet. Flood
plains in use, visibly humped on wet, dark hips. I forget to despise the green-tiled
brilliance of the flat land. Forget to despair for the loss of the sage grouse.
The country west of the 100th meridian, where the rain leaves the land. A most
resplendent nothing. The great brown west of missile sites and tracings of damp. Clouds
and snow and high desert. I steal the vision of the hawk, without his appetite or bravery.
The future was a journey from the mountains to the sea. From a land long fled. To a comfort
high and thin. Where my mother’s hard mouth and father’s beautiful sorrow formed all
the atoms of fox and feathers that I have always been.
To move so freely and see the hidden peaks, unbidden. In their entirety but not
their wholeness. Shadow-clouds softly cover the bareness, a veil to enhance. Murmuring
silence forms this voyage. To go, to go, to be gone.
Jacqueline Hughes Simon’s writing has appeared in the Cal Literature & Arts Magazine, The Cortland Review, Okay Donkey, Boaat Journal, Pine Hills Review, Pennsylvania English, The Rail, and the anthology Processing Crisis (Risk Press). She was nominated for Best of the Net by Okay Donkey in 2020. Jacqueline attended the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference and The Community of Writers’ Writing Conference on numerous occasions. She received her Master of Fine Arts in poetry from Saint Mary’s College of California. Jacqueline is a volunteer and board member of an environmental education nonprofit, where she works with and trains the donkeys.
