Firebreak

Happy National Poetry Month! We are honored to bring you poems from a special project, “Poetry in Bloom,” a collaboration with O, Miami Poetry Festival, poets Sandra Beasley and Neil de la Flor, and Dolly’s Florist. For all of April, these poems about flowers are being folded into origami and sent out with bouquets from Dolly’s. They also appear on O, Miami and on SWWIM in a variety of accessible ways, including audio, ALT text, and more.

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My daughter scraped the forest
drew lines with a long ax.

She didn’t wear ammo
or sling a gun.

She did not stop to rescue
thimble berry blossom

without burn their runners
would surely come in again.

She bumped elbows
with her classmates

trod pine needles
with rake and hoe

in order to rebuild
to make necessary boundaries.

I remind myself:
walls can be subtle

bricks can be fuel starters.
I need to reconsider my tools

pen down, grime in the nailbeds
palms outstretched

the line is moving
and we know it. Let’s practice

more service blooming
from our hands.

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Kierstin Bridger is a Colorado writer and author of Demimonde (Lithic Press), the 2017 Women Writing The West's Willa Award. She is also author of a full collection, All Ember (Urban Farmhouse Press). Winner of the Mark Fischer Poetry Prize, the 2015 ACC Writer’s Studio award, and short-listed for the Manchester Poetry Competition in the UK, she co-hosts Poetry Voice with poet Uche Ogbuji. Find more of her work in december, Prairie Schooner, and Painted Bride Quarterly. She earned her MFA at Pacific University. See Kierstinbridger.com.