Glide by Ginny Mahar
“Glide” by Ginny Mahar I walked out the back door of the house, fifteen years old with a pair of white leather ice skates looped over my shoulder. Down the hill and through the valley of the yard, I passed remnants of a snowman in a heap amid a Michigan-winter’s worth of snow. Beyond, a wall of long-needled pines opened into a meadow. Long coral ribbons of the day’s last light wove through the sky:...
Coastline Forecast: February by Claudia McGhee
“Coastline Forecast: February” by Claudia McGhee We frozen women hear the dogged beat of thickened waves through rotten, tunneled snow. We read on shale the grey veneer of sleet, in the blackened scrawl of seaweed, we know. The thickened waves through rotten, tunneled snow hammer our shores with mandatory pain. In the blackened scrawl of seaweed, we know the sharp edge. The slap of thunder and rain hammer our...
The Voyage Out: A Poem by Marian O’Brien Paul
“The Voyage Out: A Poem*” (a forced collaboration) by Marian O’Brien Paul I. The river Sometimes the river is an opulent purple or mud-colored or a sparkling blue like the sea A straw floats past, caught in an iridescent circle swims in the well of a tear Words strike her ear like the drop of a straw or a stick stroke or the impact on river water of a solitary tear With eyes as unreflecting as water...
Swash Zone by Nancy Carol Moody
“Swash Zone” by Nancy Carol Moody Breathing is primary; speech, secondary. Absent breath, speech does not occur. If the woman cannot breathe, she cannot scream. seafoam breaking on the shoreline a young girl, giggling The drowning woman extends her arms outward so that she may push down on the surface of the water, an action which forces her body upward, permitting her to breathe. This movement is not...
Trying to Return by Sandy Gillespie
“Trying to Return” by Sandy Gillespie The ledge is deep enough to sit on, wide enough for one. Damp ground, soft with layered leaves, is chill beneath me. A wood stove somewhere near breathes birch into the midnight sky — false sense of warmth. A full moon hangs cold light from heaven, a blaze of white to mark the river’s passing. I remember April’s jumbled crush of ice — the push of...
River Broken Story by Molly Scott
“River Broken Story” by Molly Scott A river runs between the ragged edges of my broken story Its blessing is its silence But when desire and longing rise up in me like a high wind keening never ever in my heart, and when the ghosts of gone loves jangle in the current like loosened stones, I run distracted on both sides of myself, wild, tearing my hair, believing everything and nothing, seeing rift and not the...
Valley River by Ethel Mays
“Valley River” by Ethel Mays See it running through fields of alfalfa and interloping wild oats, chasing after the sound of tight gut strummed over exotic woods crafted by the ones who know the music that must be played for the heart disappearing into green turning to sun beaten gold, valley floor the sacred anvil of the hammering sun, birds in flight with the ghosts of childhood memories: legs browned by...
Oceans by Shirley Plummer
“Oceans” by Shirley Plummer what is soluble or separable enters the oceans from a stream that empties into the sea from a lake, if lacking outlet soaking into the earth seeping through emerging in rivulets or evaporating into the sky falling as rain on water falling as rain on land rainwashed dust and smoke, even sand is moved by the sea and the edge of one sea blends into the next You, love, may be in the...
On a Highway of the Pacific Coast by Cheryl Buchanan
“On a Highway of the Pacific Coast” by Cheryl Buchanan Each of us arrives here, naked and blind. Screaming the very same thing. Follow the deep breath of the ocean inside you in and out again. ____________________ Share your response to this work, in any form, here Cheryl Buchanan’s Artist Statement: Cheryl Buchanan is an attorney from Los Angeles who earned her MFA while teaching Writing...
Bird Women of Wells-next-the-Sea by Ingrid Jendrzejewski
“Bird Women of Wells-next-the-Sea” by Ingrid Jendrzejewski They lie in flocks on the beach, tangled amidst the seaweed, their sinewy, sun-stained bodies sprawled amidst sand and terry cloth. They watch the ships with unblinking eyes, nictitating membranes twitching with the breeze that comes in from the sea. Their limbs are wet with oils, and the smells of herring and coconut emanate from their...
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August 8-9 | immersion | noon to noon EST
WAVES ALIVE is an immersive experience, held tenderly by the ebb and flow of ritual, sisterhood, creative expansion, then surfacing to share what we have uncovered about ourselves and our art. Creative sisters are invited to join us at any point and remain for any length of time during our full-circle offering.
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The Deepest Place Jul 26, 2025
