Devon Bohm
Sunray Venus, Angel Wing, Moon Shell
The concentration on your face
is the effacement of the pond
as it creates a clean, unblemished
image of the sky. Except there—
the blackening of the water
as it snags and eddies around
your calves, around where you
dip your thick wrists into the stillness.
I have given this water my blood,
rust dispersing from the featureless
soft of my arching footsoles. You
make an opus of your movements,
just as a snail does: slowly, slowly,
just as he was meant to move—
with care. There is nothing shatter-
proof in this delicate world, least of all
the seashells you bring back to me
on the boat. It is something my
father did for me—bringing me
the world in small celebration.
It has always been that which
hushed the ringing in my chest—
the susurrus of sea hidden inside
the sunray venus, an angel wing,
a little, luminous moon shell. We
won’t have the pale mouths of the
tulips for months yet—their dolorous
song so loud from the trash. Your face
opens as your hands do, with another
treasure, another gift, another piece
of something to hold—carefully,
carefully. As I am meant to exist
in your world. With precision.
With ridges. With light.
Wild Strawberries
Everywhere I have lived,
there have been wild strawberries
waiting for me to find them.
We’ve been here five years,
in a place I didn’t want to come to,
building a home and a life anyway,
as clumsy as we are.
I was daydreaming about
the shifting of sand, aquatic
animals as translucent as ether
brushing lightly, lightly against
my empty hands and I felt
the shift in my marrow:
small as my smallest fingernail,
perfect cartoon hearts as red as
bleeding, hidden in the weeds
next to our driveway.
Fingers purple with spring rain cold,
I had to touch them to believe
them real, these sacred objects,
these sage and perfect fruits
there to tell me:
there is no home, only heart,
no home but where we’ve chosen
to find this berrying, together.
The dog pulled at his leash,
and I left them for the groundhogs,
the squirrels, for you just upstairs,
waiting patiently for me to come in
from another storm, confident in
knowing I would always come back
home.
Take Me to Rhode Island
It’s how the wind gets the trees all worked up,
how there’s that calm space in the middle
of the chaos—an anchor, an eye—how
the jellyfish all gather up after the storm
while the crabs dig deeper into the seabed,
how the peach buds are ripening now,
weighing down their still-slim branches,
how swimming in this salt pond makes
some parts of me untouched by water
more buoyant, too, how we have to say
horses when we see horses plodding
their way down the sand on the beach,
how cold a beer is in your hand, how fine
the sugar sand, coating my legs in sheer
stockings, how ever since we scattered
my father’s ashes I’ve wondered in each
and every ocean if we could align so our
atoms could maybe brush up against each
other in the salt stung vastness, and it’s how
I knew I loved you before I was ready to—
it was and still is the closest to natural,
a part of this world, I have ever felt.
Devon Bohm received her BA from Smith College and earned her MFA with a dual concentration in Poetry and Fiction from Fairfield University. After serving as Mason Road’s editor-in-chief, she worked as an adjunct professor of English. She was awarded the 2011 Hatfield Prize for Best Short Story, received an honorable mention in the 2020 L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Contest, and was long-listed for Wigleaf’s Top Very Short Fictions 2021. Her work has also been featured in publications such as Labrys, The Graveyard Zine, Horse Egg Literary, Necessary Fiction, Spry, andSixfold, with more poetry forthcoming in Sunday Mornings at the River’s Covid Anthology. Her first book of poetry is due out in November 2021 from Cornerstone Press. Follow her on Instagram @devonpoem or visit her website at www.devonbohm.com.