Homesteading
Adrian Blevins | Poetry
I wanted to name the birds
in my mind a little & maybe even
call back to the owls, say who cooks
for you who cooks for you through
the open window can’t sleep a wink
so why not screech. But wouldn’t
that be retorting to nature I said
sleepy to myself & wouldn’t that be
futile if sort of hilarious & isn’t
the problem here time anyway
& what to do with its diminishment
O & the body & where to bury it
& that whole thing of the poor old soul
& where it goes when it goes so yes
I got stuck between the this & the that
like rain I want to say in a pitcher
on a platter in the rain rain rain rain rain.
Adrian Blevins’s most recent book of poetry is Status Pending (Four Way Books, 2023), winner of the 2024 Maine Literary Awards for Poetry. Her other full-length collections are Appalachians Run Amok, Live from the Homesick Jamboree, and The Brass Girl Brouhaha. She also co-edited Walk Till the Dogs Get Mean, a collection of essays by new and emerging Appalachian writers, and is the recipient of many additional awards and honors including the Wilder Prize from Two Sylvias Press, a Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and a Rona Jaffe Writer’s Foundation Award. She is a professor of English at Colby College in Waterville, Maine.