Tuesday 26 June 2018


portrait of a Missouri woman

by Nixi Schroeder


she is the cloud bank;
she whispers imposition
from the curve of her neck, the
sigh of her shoulder, the
sycamore-blues of her grass-eaten knee. she is
amber, clotted against autumn’s pavement, a
mite, crawling smallishly in her plastic beads and worn-through jeans
and she matches her dresses to her bruises
for she (will not) tolerate ugly things.

and she is a horizon;
she is smudged rain;
she is rusted bridges, her legs
the baked silt brown of river clay
every inch as powdered, as brittle,
and
slowly (secretly)
she is cracking from dryness
but

each night, her sovereign lips
whisper skyward,
(secretly)
poaching soft kisses
from a whisky-cask
moon.

and she dreams
she is breathing


* * * * *

Nixi Schroeder is a teaching assistant and MA student of English at Truman State University. Her work has been featured by The Fem, Red Dashboard Press, Eyedrum Periodically, Sweet 16's not AR 15's, The Monitor, Everyday Poets, and Windfall Magazine, among other publications. She is also a former poetry reader for the Chariton Review.

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