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.
SARA VALENTINE
We had been driving West for so long that the sun had come and gone twice already,
Sliding across the moon-roof like the tumbleweeds blowing in the road.
We were miles from Marfa, on the shoulder of a dark desert highway, when I told you I loved you for the first time. It was the least important thing I told you that night.
I told you it takes the beetles a day (maybe two) when they clean the bones of a small animal dry. I told you that I am better than a beetle and you barked out a laugh.
My confession came too easily.
Last night I was watching the White Prickly Poppy sway in the wind.
Dripping wax dripping sap the milk doesn’t run, it walks. It strolls, it saunters.
It crawls down your clenched fist and up your wrist- pressing on pressure points like piano keys.
It croons and convulses its way past your teeth and down your throat.
Love, like the desert poppies, grows best in the moonlight,
You are the bones I would pick and you are the flowers I would plant.
The sap on my hands looks like blood in the morning.
Sara Valentine (she/her) is a poet and multimedia artist currently living in Boston, Massachusetts. She is a Writing, Literature, and Publishing major at Emerson College, and hopes to stay in town as long as she can still stand the snow. Her work has been published with Vision and Voice (2018) as well as in WackMag (2022).
