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.
ELIZABETH CRANFORD GARCIA
Here is a little greenhouse,
pilgrim. Breathe in
peppermint, winter.
Take a break from the babies.
Breathe out the cinders
of your daughter’s house
from the pyres burning there
the we-can’t-have-that-here
in her husband’s eyes.
When your incense of flint and forge
follows you into the house,
coils down the hall,
leaves its skin in his boot,
that milky threat,
when it scrolls round corners
like a prayer, its ghost body testifying
someone has sinned,
when he says we have rules
and means higher ways—
breathe in and out
until the airport parting,
the gravelly goodbye.
Then, o pilgrim, then you can plant
one smoky smack on his lips,
one kiss like a coal
on his livid mouth.
Elizabeth Cranford Garcia’s work has or will appear in journals such as Tar River Poetry, Chautauqua, Cider Press Review, Portland Review, CALYX, Tinderbox Poetry, Dialogist, SoFloPoJo, Mom Egg Review, and Anti-Heroin Chic. She is the recipient of the 2022 Banyan Poetry Prize, was a finalist for the 2023 Brett Elizabeth Jenkins Poetry Prize, and has received three Pushcart nominations. She is the author of the chapbook Stunt Double, serves as the current Poetry Editor for Dialogue: a Journal of Mormon Thought, is a Georgia native and mother of three. Read more of her work at elizabethcgarcia.wordpress.com.
